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Bates College SCARAB

Honors Theses Capstone Projects

5-2021

Stories from the : Narratives of , 1805-2021

Maximilian LeGrand Friedenwald-Fishman Bates College, [email protected]

Follow this and additional works at: https://scarab.bates.edu/honorstheses

Recommended Citation Friedenwald-Fishman, Maximilian LeGrand, "Stories from the Flood: Narratives of Celilo Falls, 1805-2021" (2021). Honors Theses. 366. https://scarab.bates.edu/honorstheses/366

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Stories from the Flood: Narratives of Celilo Falls, 1805-2021

An Honors Thesis Presented to The Faculty of the Department of History Bates College

In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts

By

Maximilian Friedenwald-Fishman Lewiston, Maine May 5, 2021

1 Acknowledgements

First and foremost, I would like to thank Professor Andrew Baker, the advisor for this thesis, for all of his invaluable input and support throughout this process. I am beyond grateful for his close readings, detailed feedback, thoughtful insight, and words of encouragement. I would also like to thank the Bates Department of History as a whole for providing me the foundation to be able to research and write this project. Specifically, I want to thank Professor Patrick Otim, for inspiring me to become a history major and Professor Joseph Hall, for providing me with key sources and whose class, “Native American History,” made me ask the questions that eventually led me to my topic. I want to acknowledge Domi Frideger, Elliot Wilson, and Anna Maheu for their camaraderie throughout this process. I am grateful to my family, for both supporting me during this project and for providing me the opportunity to receive an education at Bates College. Thank you, Grandma, Opa, and Pibby for sending me poetry, , and academic sources that proved invaluable to my final thesis. Lastly, I owe a huge thank you to Madeline Clark, whose encouragement, optimism, empathy, and company made this thesis possible. This thesis is dedicated to Colonel Robert Friedenwald, who served as the District Engineer, 1980-1985 and later worked on the .

2 Abstract

For 11,000 years, Celilo Falls was the most important fishery and trading locale for Indigenous people living in the Basin and the greater Pacific . In 1957, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers closed the floodgates of the newly constructed Dalles , and, within four hours, Celilo Falls drowned. This thesis examines the inundation of Celilo Falls through the perspectives of narrative, meaning-making, and historical memory. The first chapter uses the writings of early nineteenth-century explorers and settlers, such as Lewis and Clark, and analyzes how the first American narratives of Celilo began the process of meaning- making for the space that would ultimately lead to inundation. The second chapter explores the conflict between Native people and Americans along the Columbia River during the twentieth century, looking at American art, songs, Native stories, newspaper articles, and government reports to better understand the perception of Celilo for Native and non-Native actors. The third chapter studies the era of dam construction and the negotiations between the U.S. government and Native people. Finally, the conclusion explores narratives of Celilo post-inundation. It analyzes Native storytelling, poetry, novels, and school curricula to understand how Celilo is remembered and memorialized. Additionally, it delves into conversations surrounding dam removal both in Maine and on the Columbia River. Influential narratives constructed and perpetuated by Americans in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries characterized Celilo Falls as a hindrance to progress and as a resource for technological advancement, which ultimately led to inundation. This starkly opposed the Native conceptualization of Celilo as a home, a meeting place, a place of bounty and wealth, and a space of cultural and spiritual importance. This thesis underscores the relationship between place, narrative, and meaning-making, as well as its consequential and lasting effects.

3 Table of Contents Acknowledgements ...... 2 Abstract ...... 3 Introduction ...... 5 Celilo Falls ...... 5 The Importance and Power of Narratives ...... 9 Literature Review ...... 15 A Note on Language Choice ...... 18 Chapter 1: Celilo Falls in the Nineteenth Century and the Arrival of Euro-Americans ..... 19 Creating Narrative: Celilo Falls and The Corps of Discovery ...... 19 Early Traders and the River Changes Hands: 1811-1855 ...... 29 Chapter 2: Pre-Inundation...... 40 Art and the Aesthetic Appreciation of the Columbia River ...... 40 The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Navigation Development ...... 43 Shifting Narratives of Celilo Falls...... 47 Celilo Village ...... 55 Fishery Conflict ...... 59 Racism in The Dalles ...... 63 Chapter 3: The Inundation of Celilo Falls ...... 69 Approving ...... 69 Pushback, Negotiation, Compensation, and Construction ...... 74 “The Darkest Day” ...... 88 Conclusion: Post-Inundation ...... 95 Memorializing Celilo Falls...... 95 Moving Forward ...... 106 Bibliography ...... 111

4 Introduction

Celilo Falls

Celilo Falls, also known as Wyam— the word for “echo of falling water,” was a cascade that spanned the breadth of the Columbia River (N’Che Wana) approximately ninety miles upriver from present day Portland, . Twelve to fifteen million years ago, intermittent lava flows erupting from fissures in the earth’s crust created layers of that gradually formed the Columbia River Plateau. Over the course of millions of years, the

Columbia River carved away at these deposits, creating the and the

Dalles-Celilo Reach.1 The Dalles-Celilo Reach, which encompassed Celilo Falls and the ensuing eleven-mile stretch of river known as the Long and Short Narrows, was laden with high basalt cliffs, rapids, chutes, and eddies. The geographical nature of the Columbia River in the Dalles-

Celilo Reach made it a choke point for salmon heading upriver to spawn, and as such, Celilo

Falls and the Long and Short Narrows was the most productive inland fishery for Indigenous people in Native North America.2

For 11,000 years, the area surrounding Celilo Falls was continually inhabited by

Chinookan and Sahaptin speaking peoples that used the abundant salmon runs as a main source of sustenance and trade.3 In total, over twenty separate bands and tribes inhabited the Columbia

River Plateau and fished and traded at Celilo Falls, but treaties signed in 1855 combined the groups into four tribes: the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Nation in south-

1 Pat Courtney Gold, "The Long Narrows: The Forgotten Geographic and Cultural Wonder," Oregon Historical Quarterly 108, no. 4 (2007): 597-98, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20615799. 2 Cain Allen, ""Boils Swell & Whorl Pools"," Article, Oregon Historical Quarterly 108, no. 4 (2007): 546-547. 3 Katrine Barber, Death of Celilo Falls (Seattle, WA: Center for the Study of the in association with University of Press, 2005), 20-21.

5 central Washington, made up of the Kah-milt-pah, Klickitat, Klinquit, Kow-was-say-ee, Li-ay- was, Oche-chotes, , Pisquose, Se-ap-cat, Shyiks, Skinpah, Wenatshapam, Wishram, and

Yakama; the of ; the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian

Reservation in north , made up of Umatilla, Cayuse, and Walla Walla; and the

Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs in north central Oregon, made up of the Warm Springs

Tribe—Tygh, Wyam, , and Dock-spus bands—and the Wasco Tribe—Ki-gal-twal-la and

Dog River bands.4

At Celilo Falls, men stood on basalt outcroppings, small islands, and later wooden platforms above the thundering river and used long dip nets to scoop salmon from the tumultuous water; at the Wasco and Wishram villages along the shore, women filleted and dried the fish. People came from as far north as present-day and as far east as the to fish, gamble, socialize, and trade for food and material goods. Pre-contact, an estimated

10,000 Indigenous people permanently lived in the Dalles-Celilo Reach and the population may have increased by as much as 3,000 people during the height of the fishing season.5 Scholars estimate that pre-dam salmon runs on the Columbia reached between 10 and 16 million fish annually.6 Due to the sheer amount of fish bypassing the falls every year to spawn upriver, salmon accounted for a considerable amount of the caloric intake for the Wascos and Wishrams, likely between 30 and 40 percent of the diet for people living at Celilo Falls.7

4 Member Tribes Overview," (Website), Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fishing Commission, 2020, 2020, https://www.critfc.org/member_tribes_overview/. 5 Barber, Katrine, Death of Celilo Falls. 21-23. 6 Andrew Fisher, Katrine Barber, "From to the Corps of Engineers: Recalling the History of the Dalles— Celilo Reach," Oregon Historical Quarterly 108, no. 4 (2007): 525. 7 Richard White, The Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River (New York: Hill and Wang, 1995), 18.

6 More than simply a place where salmon were seen as a resource for both food and trade,

Celilo Falls held a greater spiritual meaning for people living along the river. Tribal legend says that when the Creator made humans, He called forth a council of creation and asked for gifts to help humans survive. Salmon, or wy-kan-ush in Sahaptin, was first and offered his body to feed people. Second, Water offered to be the home for the salmon. As such, one of the most important ceremonies for people living at Celilo Falls was the First Salmon ceremony, which celebrated the return of salmon each season and marked the beginning of fishing.8 A mythical story recorded at

Wishram in 1909 tells the tale of how Coyote freed the salmon after two greedy sisters penned up all the salmon in a lake. Coyote disguised himself as driftwood and later a baby so he could infiltrate the women’s camp. Then, when the sisters were out collecting wood, Coyote dug away at the mud damming the salmon and freed them into the river so all other beings could share the salmon.9 Passed down for generations, both of these stories highlight the centrality of salmon and water in the lives of people living along the Columbia River. Salmon and the river were literally the source of life and survival. The stories also underscore the symbolic importance of the river and salmon in Native culture in the Pacific Northwest. For the people at Celilo Falls, salmon was not only food, but a connection to the water, their ancestors, and their Creator.

By the late eighteenth century, Euro-American trappers and traders had begun exploring the Pacific Northwest region, but it was not until the arrival of the Corps of Discovery in the early nineteenth century, that the falls were first entered into written history. The Journals of

Lewis and Clark contain the first written descriptions of Celilo Falls in the early nineteenth century. Other early explorers, trappers, traders, and missionaries bypassed the falls on their way

8 "First Salmon Feast," (Website), Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fishing Commission, 2020, 2020, https://www.critfc.org/salmon-culture/tribal-salmon-culture/first-salmon-feast/. 9 W.E. Myers, "Oregon Voices: Coyote Frees the Salmon," Oregon Historical Quarterly 108, no. 4 (2007).

7 down the Columbia River and wrote descriptions of the people who lived, fished, and traded at the falls, but many of their writings portray the Dalles-Celilo Reach as a problematic space to traverse. In the mid-to late nineteenth century, white American settlers began inhabiting the

Columbia River Plateau and settled The Dalles twelve miles downriver from Celilo Falls. As opposed to the Native people who viewed Celilo Falls, the river, and salmon as a gift from the

Creator, Americans saw the river as a potential source of hydroelectric power, a maritime highway for transporting goods, and Celilo Falls, the Long and Short Narrows, and the people living at the falls as a barrier to technological progress. In the 1950s, the U.S. Army Corps of

Engineers (USACE) began construction of The Dalles Dam with the dual purpose of harnessing the power of the river and taming the tumultuous rapids for eased river navigation. On March 10,

1957, spectators lined up along the Columbia River Gorge Highway to witness an engineering feat. The gates of The Dalles Dam were closed and within four hours, the Long and Short

Narrows, Celilo Falls, Celilo Village, and the platforms where people had fished for millennia were drowned in the backwaters of the dam. As the roaring river went quiet and flat, Native people wept on the shore. When Wyam Chief Tommy Thompson heard the news in his nursing home, he said, “There goes my life.”10

Today, driving east past The Dalles along I-84, you would see the concrete walls of The

Dalles Dam spanning over a mile across the Columbia River. Behind the looming spillways, the waters of the river are calm. Large barges transport millions of tons of wheat, corn, wood, and minerals from Idaho to the Pacific Ocean. If you keep driving for a few miles and take exit 97, turn left under the highway, and cross train tracks, you would find yourself at a small park on the banks of the still water with picnic tables shaded by trees, windsurfers, and a large brown sign

10 George W. Aguilar Sr, "Celilo Lives on Paper," Article, Oregon Historical Quarterly 108, no. 4 (2007). 613.

8 with a red U.S. Army Corps of Engineers logo that reads “Celilo Park Recreation Area.” At the new Celilo Village, there is still a small population of mostly members of the Yakama Nation and Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs. A First Salmon ceremony still takes place annually, but the fish are no longer caught at Celilo.11

The Importance and Power of Narratives

Reclaiming Native Truth is an initiative of the First Nations Development Institute that seeks to enact social, cultural, and policy change by dispelling myths and misconceptions about

Native people. To accomplish this goal, Reclaiming Native Truth is actively working to change the toxic, stereotypical, and harmful narratives that are used to characterize Indigenous people in the .12 According to the organization, narratives are “the broadly accepted stories that reinforce ideas, norms, issues, and expectations in society.” Narratives, in turn, have the power to reinforce stereotypes and oppressive systems.13 The ways we learn about and understand the world around us is based on the dominant narratives we hear. Histories, legends, and stories inform our perspectives on what we believe to be true or untrue. For example, what we learn about historical figures or how we talk about significant events frame the ways in which those people or moments are remembered. Narratives have the power to shape both the current moment and the distant past. The narratives we associate with place are no different. In the case of Celilo Falls, there were competing narratives used to discuss and write about the falls that were dependent upon the actor. In this thesis, I intend to examine the competing narratives that

11 Lillian Pitt, "Celilo Village: Then and Now," 2018, http://lillianpitt.com/celilo-village-then-and-now/. 12 "Reclaiming Native Truth: Changing the Narrative about Native Americans: A Guide for Allies," (First Nations Development Institute 2019), 3. https://rnt.firstnations.org/. 13 Ibid, 2.

9 framed Celilo Falls, focusing on the following questions: To what extent did the narratives surrounding Celilo Falls change between the early nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries; how did American narratives contribute to the inundation of Celilo Falls; and how did Native narratives seek to resist these forces?

Indigenous narratives of Celilo Falls can be traced over the thousands of years that Native people lived and fished at the falls. To the Wasco, Wishram, Wyam, Yakama, Umatilla, Warm

Springs, Cayuse, Nez Perce, and other tribes and bands, Celilo Falls and the Narrows was the most productive salmon fishery in the Pacific Northwest, a place where people came to trade, socialize, gamble, and fish, and home to the small group of people who lived there year-round.

Finally, it was a place of cultural importance and spiritual significance. Salmon and water were both gifts from the Creator, and as such, Celilo Falls was a place where people felt connected to the salmon, the river, and their Creator.

By comparison, American conceptualizations of Celilo Falls were created in the early nineteenth century, beginning with the journal entries of the Corps of Discovery. Analyzing those entries, it is evident that they viewed Celilo Falls in three ways. They recognized Celilo as an inhabited Indigenous space, which can be derived from the copious descriptions of drying salmon, villages, and people, while also understanding its importance as a place of commerce, trade, and a meeting place for Native people from all around the region. Yet perhaps more importantly, the members of the Corps of Discovery thought of Celilo—both the falls and the people living there—as a hindrance to river navigation. In subsequent generations, this narrative would be perpetuated and expanded to characterize Celilo as an obstacle to progress, eventually becoming a central argument as Americans ultimately pushed for dam construction to both neutralize Celilo’s perceived ferocity and harness its powers.

10 As more American explorers and settlers came to the Pacific Northwest, they began to imagine the potential of the Columbia River as a maritime highway and even a future source of . Over the course of the nineteenth century, Americans built roads, railroads, highways, cities and towns all along the Columbia River, signifying their growing control over the space. During this time, Native people faced growing pressures from American expansion, yet fought to keep fishing at Celilo Falls. Treaties signed in 1855 by the Yakama, Umatilla,

Warm Springs, and Nez Perce displaced Native people onto reservations far away from the river, but allowed them to retain fishing rights at “usual and accustomed places.” Because of this,

Native people continued fishing at Celilo Falls, but in decreased numbers. The signing of the treaties in 1855 can be seen as a tipping point, where control over the river shifted from

Indigenous people to Americans.

An additional way that American control over the river was symbolized, was through the works of painters and photographers. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, the utilitarian understanding of the river as a place that needed to be tamed in order to improve navigation and expand trade was challenged by the works of artists who sought to capture the sublime beauty of the American west. Painters like Albert Bierstadt created panoramic landscapes of the Columbia

River and Mt. Hood, which often included unspecific Native peoples in his scenes.

Photographers like Carleton Watkins and Benjamin Gifford photographed Celilo Falls and their photos were used in promotional materials to attract tourists to the area. The works of American artists created a new conception of the river and Celilo Falls as a beautiful place, but also symbolized a further colonization of the space by presenting the land as almost uninhabited.

Despite this new addition to the narrative, the dominant American narrative of Celilo Falls as a hindrance remained.

11 At the beginning of the twentieth century, the potential of hydroelectric power became a renewed part of the American imagination, as new technologies now made it possible to harness electricity from river currents. State and federal engineers studied the feasibility of building a dam at The Dalles that would provide both improved navigation along the Columbia River and power to the cities and towns in the region. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers published the

“308 Report” in 1932, which laid out detailed plans for building ten large along the mainstem of the Columbia River. The report received pushback from Native groups who knew that the dams would be in violation of their treaty rights. By this time, the American narrative of

Celilo had shifted and the falls and the people who lived there were not only seen as a hindrance to navigation, but as an obstacle to progress. The majority of Americans approved of dam construction and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt even campaigned on the promise of approving publicly built dams along the Columbia River. In the 1930s, became the first mainstem dam to be constructed despite opposition from Native people and commercial fishermen, who contested a structure that would block passage of migrating fish and flood traditional fishing sites. Following the dam’s completion, the Bonneville Power Administration

(BPA) was formed with the purpose of transmitting and marketing the power generated by dams.

To convince people that public work projects, like dams, benefited individuals, the BPA even hired Woody Guthrie to write propaganda-like songs about the Columbia River and how dams would help modernize the region.

Meanwhile, Native people continued to live and fish at Celilo Falls, including a dozen families that lived there year-round. It remained an Indigenous space, but conflicts between

Native fishermen and white fishers, along with the proposed Dalles Dam, threatened this reality, along with deeply ingrained racism that continued to frame Native people in The Dalles as a

12 uniquely dangerous obstacle to progress. Additionally, Native fishers also had to contend with the competition of white-owned canneries, which bought a good portion of Native peoples’ catch, but also symbolized and enacted further American control over the river and its resources.

After WWII, the USACE began hosting public meetings to gauge dissent and support for

The Dalles Dam. Native people and white commercial fishermen disapproved of the plan, but for different reasons. Native people were concerned how the dam would impact salmon and that it would inundate Celilo Falls, while white fishermen were more worried about how the dam would impact their livelihood. Native people also relied on the falls for their financial livelihood, but Celilo was also a source of cultural and spiritual wellness. On the other side, the USACE, the

BPA, and business leaders in the region supported the plan because it would provide improved navigation, hydroelectric power, irrigation, and flood control, arguing that these beneficial outcomes for the region outweighed any protestations from dissenting voices. When the USACE sought Congressional appropriations to fund the dam in the early 1950s, extolling its potential national defense benefits against a Cold War backdrop, Native people, white fishermen, and white-Native allies resisted. Representatives from the four treaty tribes flew to Washington D.C. and argued that construction of The Dalles Dam would violate the rights stipulated in the 1855 treaties. Members of the delegation also tried explaining the cultural significance of the falls and how no compensation could be adequate, while white fishing lobbyists testified that the dam would destroy the salmon industry of the Pacific Northwest. Despite these arguments, Congress approved construction of the dam, with the caveat that the USACE negotiate compensation with the affected tribes.

During construction, 1952 to 1957, Native people continued to resist, but faced an uphill battle. The USACE released a report about the “problem” of the Native fishery at Celilo and

13 concluded that the interests of businessmen, industrial development, and “normal progress” outweighed the interests and rights of Native people and began negotiating compensation with the four treaty tribes. In their reports, the USACE recognized the cultural importance of Celilo

Falls to Native people, but this did not reflect in their compensation. In the end, the four tribes were paid only the estimated monetary value of the fishery and the residents of Celilo Village were relocated.

The inundation of Celilo Falls in 1957 was a day of celebration for the majority of

Americans, who saw the completion of The Dalles Dam as a symbol of growth, modernization, and progress. Local newspapers lauded the completion of the dam as a momentous occasion that strengthened the economy of the region. For Native people, the day of inundation was a moment of immense loss and sadness, that also can be characterized as a form of cultural erasure, displacement, and dispossession. Native individuals recalled the devastation of that day and shared their reactions in oral and written testimonies. Today, however, the Native narratives of

Celilo Falls persist through the memorialization of the falls by Indigenous leaders, writers, and educators.

This thesis will demonstrate that the American narratives surrounding Celilo Falls changed between the arrival of white settlers and the inundation of the falls. Originally, Celilo and the people that lived there were only conceptualized as a hindrance to river navigation, but this narrative naturally morphed over the following century to characterize the falls and Native people as an obstacle to broader settlement, industry, and overall progress. Consequently, these narratives directly contributed to the inundation of Celilo Falls as American narratives of progress were used to override and delegitimize the interests and claims of Indigenous people.

For Native people, the understanding of Celilo as a place of wealth sustenance, cultural

14 importance, a meeting place, and a home persisted until inundation, despite the encroachment of

American settlers and increased dispossession from the land and water. Today, the Native narratives of Celilo Falls remain through forms of remembrance and memorialization.

Literature Review

This thesis will be a comparative analysis of the historical narratives surrounding Celilo

Falls and its inundation. Narratives surrounding the inundation of Celilo Falls and the construction of The Dalles Dam are starkly opposing depending on which source is utilized.

From Indigenous perspectives like those of Allen V. Pinkham Sr. (Nez Perce), who spent a good deal of his childhood at Celilo Village, the inundation of Celilo Falls was a deeply saddening moment, both in 1957 and now. He described in an essay returning to where he used to fish and how “the silence is a terrible thing to experience.”14 For members of the Nez Perce, Umatilla,

Yakama, and Warm Springs, the inundation of Celilo was a traumatic day when a large part of their cultural identity, history, and economy was quite literally drowned. Other authors, like

Roberta Ulrich, a journalist who wrote a book about the relationship between Native people and dams on the Columbia, support this argument. Empty Nets: Indians, Dams, and the Columbia

River suggests that the consequences of Celilo’s inundation for Native people, the river, and salmon were much greater than the benefits reaped from The Dalles Dam.15 All contemporary authors recognize that Native people lost a large part of their culture that day, but some like

William Willingham, a historian for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, have continued to

14 Allen V. Pinkham, "Childhood Memories of Fishing at Celilo Falls," Oregon Historical Quarterly 108, no. 4 (2007). 15 Roberta Ulrich, Empty Nets: Indians, Dams, and the Columbia River, ed. William L. Lang, Culture and Environment Series, (Corvallis, OR: Press, 1999).

15 highlight the progress that The Dalles Dam allowed for on the mid-Columbia River. In his book about the history of the USACE in Oregon, Willingham mentions that the Corps knew the construction of the dam would completely flood the falls, but spends more time engaging the reader about the progress that had been made from rural electrification—"The 22-unit powerhouse produced more than 9.2 billion kilowatts-hours of electricity [annually]”—such as aluminum fabrication, navigation, recreation, and flood control.16 All the aforementioned authors analyze the justifications for the construction of The Dalles Dam and weigh the consequences to the benefits. For authors like Pinkham and Ulrich, the inundation of Celilo was egregious and unjustifiable. For Willingham, the loss of Celilo Falls was a necessary consequence in order to boost the economy and quality of life for people in The Dalles.

Other scholars like Katrine Barber and William Lang have explored narratives of Celilo

Falls. In her book Death of Celilo Falls, Barber dedicated a chapter to examining the narrative of progress that surrounded the construction of The Dalles Dam in the twentieth century.17 Her chapter explains the construction of the dam within the context of the national push for postwar development. Barber explains that for residents of The Dalles, the narratives of progress downplayed the negative effects that construction had on the town, such as overcrowded classrooms and housing shortages. Additionally, the chapter also analyzes the ways the local newspaper largely characterized Native people in a negative way. She concludes that The Dalles

Chronicle manufactured an unsympathetic and racialized image of the Celilo Village community, which informed the ways American residents understood and perceived Celilo.

Lang’s article, “The Meaning of Falling Water: Celilo Falls and the Dalles in Historical

16 William F. Willingham, Army Engineers and the Development of Oregon: A History of the Portland District U.S. Army Corps of Engineers(Portland, 1983). 17 Barber, Death of Celilo Falls. 96-124.

16 Literature,” delves into the narratives surrounding Celilo Falls with a greater temporal scope.18

His article spans from 1807 to 2006 and examines the meaning of Celilo to different actors throughout history. His source base primarily focuses on journal entries of early explorers, reports from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and books published post-inundation. While both of these authors successfully explain the narratives surrounding Celilo Falls, Barber’s book primarily focuses on the twentieth century, whereas Lang’s article primarily utilizes American primary sources to explore the narratives of the falls.

In my thesis, I incorporate both American and Indigenous written academic secondary sources and creative primary sources to further examine the narratives of Celilo Falls over a larger temporal scope. By doing so, this thesis will track how narratives surrounding Celilo were constructed, changed, and perpetuated. Moreover, the analysis of creative sources such as poems, songs, stories, and school curricula will allow me to better understand the ways in which narratives are portrayed and consumed by actors and members of the public. This thesis will begin with the writings of Lewis and Clark in 1805 and end in 2021 with the renewed calls for removing dams along the Columbia River and here in Maine. The thesis will utilize primary sources that highlight Native agency, such as poems, oral histories, and contemporary educational materials, although nineteenth-century Indigenous sources are lacking. For this reason, I will also rely on American primary sources such as journal entries, book publications, government documents, and newspaper articles.

18 William L. Lang, "The Meaning of Falling Water: Celilo Falls and the Dalles in Historical Literature," Oregon Historical Quarterly 108, no. 4 (2007): 566-585.

17 A Note on Language Choice

In this thesis, I have made the intentional choice to refer to non-Native people as

Americans and in some cases Euro-Americans and Native people as either Native people or

Indigenous people. The terms Native American and Indian can be confusing and problematic.

Both terms place a colonial history on the experience of Native identity and conflate Indigeneity with being American.19 By using the terms Native people and Indigenous people, it informs the reader of an enduring history, one that began long before the arrival of white settlers and one that continues today. However, in cases where I am writing about a specified place, person, or event,

I try to use the specific name of the tribe or band. Lastly, when referring to places, such as the

Columbia River or The Dalles, I am using the American name because the majority of my sources refer to places from an American context. Whenever possible, I include the Sahaptin or

Chinookan place names when introducing a location.

19 Michael Yellow Bird, "What We Want to Be Called: Indigenous Peoples’ Perspectives on Racial and Ethnic Identity Labels," American Indian Quarterly 23, no. 2 (1999), https://doi.org/10.2307/1185964.

18 Chapter 1: Celilo Falls in the Nineteenth Century and the Arrival of Euro-Americans

Creating Narrative: Celilo Falls and The Corps of Discovery

On the clear, cold morning of October 21, 1805, the Lewis and Clark Expedition, also known as the Corps of Discovery, continued westward along the Columbia River, fewer than three weeks away from the Pacific Ocean. Comprising mostly of enlisted army officers and privates, the expedition had embarked from St. Charles, Missouri almost a year and a half prior, under the leadership of Captain and Second Lieutenant . Lewis and Clark were under orders from President Thomas Jefferson to find a “direct and practicable water communication across [the] continent for the purposes of commerce.”20 This imagined

Northwest passage did not exist, but the party spent almost three years mapping mountains and rivers, sketching flora and fauna, and writing about the Indigenous peoples they encountered on their way. That morning, in October 1805, they woke up earlier than usual, and having no wood to cook, set off in their five canoes without breakfast. Later that morning, at around ten o’clock, the expedition halted at a small Native village where they bought wood to cook breakfast and also purchased pounded salmon, root cakes, and acorns. While the members of the party cooked and ate, the Native people of the village informed them that a few miles downriver, they would encounter many rapids and a great waterfall. As they set off once again, the river became increasingly turbulent and the number of Native people observed by the party also increased.

Joseph Whitehouse, the expedition’s tailor noted the abundance of Native people fishing on the river and their practice of preserving salmon. “We continued on, and passed several Islands &

20 William F. Willingham, Army Engineers and the Development of Oregon: A History of the Portland District U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Portland, 1983), 2.

19 fishing Camps, where the natives had large Quantities of pounded fish. The Natives dry & pound the best of their fish which they put up in small stacks, along the River Shores for winter, & cover them over with Straw and pile Stones up high round them.”21 The following day, the Corps of Discovery arrived at the top of Celilo Falls.

The first written mentions of Celilo Falls were documented by members of the Lewis and

Clark Expedition at the end of October 1805 and the end of April 1806.22 These first descriptions of the Columbia River, the falls, and the Native peoples who inhabited the area, set a precedent for how Celilo Falls would be viewed, understood, and written about by Euro-Americans in the following century. Within the journal entries, three distinct narratives or frameworks of the

American perception of Celilo Falls emerge. Firstly, the writings from October 1805 and April

1806 situated Celilo Falls as a space inhabited by Indigenous peoples. The characterizations of the Native people at Celilo were more racist than the descriptions of other Native people along the Columbia River and the writings of the men failed to recognize the cultural significance of

Celilo. However, a reader cannot ignore the prevalence of Native groups in the observations of expedition members, many emphasizing the prominence of salmon and fishing. Second, these first entries showed Celilo as a place of commerce and trade, both between Native groups along the Columbia River and between Native and Euro-American traders; the descriptions of material goods presented Celilo as an economic center of commerce. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, the descriptions of the physical river, falls, rapids, and eddies, framed Celilo as a

21 Patrick Gass, William Clark, John Ordway, Joseph Whitehouse, "Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition: October 21, 1805," (Center for Digital Research in the Humanities in partnership with the University of Nebraska Press and funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, August 3, 2020 1805). 22 Although the history of Celilo Falls predates the arrival of American colonizers, the first mention of Celilo in written history was not until the Lewis and Clark expedition bypassed the falls in 1805 and again on their return journey in 1806. Because this thesis explores the narratives surrounding Celilo Falls, the journal entries from October 21st to October 25th 1805 and April 16th to April 21st 1806 will be the starting point in the chronology of my sources.

20 hindrance to river navigation. This final aspect of the narrative would ultimately contribute to

Celilo’s inundation 150 years later.

On October 22, the expedition arrived at the top of Celilo Falls. The tumultuous water made it impossible to get their boats and belongings quickly past the massive cataracts, so the group spent the next three days portaging their canoes with the help of the Wasco-Wishram, surveying the falls, and trading with the nearby villages. The entries made by expedition members during late October 1805 situated Celilo Falls and the Columbia River as a distinctly

Indigenous place. John Ordway, the Senior Sergeant of the expedition explained how the party made camp beneath the falls near a Wasco-. “We halted about noon a Short distance above at a large Indian villages [sic]. the huts of which is covred [sic] with white ceeder

[sic] bark these Savages have an abundance of dry and pounded Sammon [sic].”23 His observations both underscored the history of Celilo Falls as an inhabited space and also emphasized the importance of salmon in the livelihood and culture of people living along the

Columbia River. Moreover, his reference to the Wasco-Wishram as “savages” epitomized the racist sentiments members of the party had towards Native people. Entries by other expedition members noted the abundance of Native people living around the falls. Whitehouse wrote, “we halted little above about noon and bought Some pounded fish and root bread of the natives who are verry [sic] thick about these falls.”24 William Clark noted in his journal that he observed

“several tooms [sic]” on one of the nearby islands.25 Each of these entries that described the

Native people living around Celilo bolstered the narrative of the falls as an Indigenous space; the buildings and great quantity of salmon demonstrated the large population around the river and

23 Ordway, "Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition: October 22, 1805," 1805. 24 Whitehouse, "Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition: October 22, 1805," 1805. 25 Clark, "Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition: October 22, 1805," 1805.

21 the tombs observed by Clark underscored a long history of habitation. This illustrated that the

Dalles-Celilo Reach and the greater Columbia River Basin were not only Native spaces when the

Corps of Discovery arrived, but long before.

Celilo Falls was also the best fishery on the river due to chutes and eddies that churned at the base of the falls and acted as a choke point for salmon swimming upstream. Consequently, observations by the Corps of Discovery of the Native peoples living near the falls were laden with descriptions of salmon fishing. Clark described how the geology of Celilo made fishing easier: “This Chanel [sic] is through a hard rough black rock, from 50–100 yards wide. Swelling and boiling in a most tremendious maner [sic] Several places on which the Indians inform me they take the Salmon as fast as they wish.”26 The geographical features of the Dalles-Celilo

Reach, specifically the rapids and the falls, slowed the salmon as they came up the Columbia and made the eleven mile stretch of river the most productive fishery in the Pacific Northwest.27

Clark also made detailed observations of the curing techniques used to preserve salmon, which involved pounding dried salmon flat and storing them in stacked baskets wrapped in mats in order to keep cool.28 Both passages that described the geology of the fishery and of the salmon curing process demonstrated the importance of salmon in the diet of the people living at Celilo

Falls and the quality of the curing process suggested that the Wasco-Wishram traded with other

Indigenous groups. Furthermore, Clark’s extensive description of salmon curing demonstrated that the practices of the people at Celilo were a novelty to the American explorers and a specific practice of the people at Celilo. The Indigenous knowledge observed by the Corps of Discovery

26 Clark, "Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition: October 25, 1805," 1805. 27 Cain Allen, ""Boils Swell & Whorl Pools"," Article, Oregon Historical Quarterly 108, no. 4 (2007): 546. 28 Clark, "Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition: October 22, 1805," 1805.

22 of the fishery and salmon connected to the long history of habitation at Celilo Falls and the conceptualization of the falls as a Native space.

In April 1806, during their return journey eastward, the expedition again bypassed Celilo

Falls and the Wasco-Wishram villages. This time, the group witnessed the First Salmon ceremony, one of the most important traditions of the Native people that lived at Celilo Falls and the other Plateau tribes along the Columbia River. The ceremony celebrated the return of the salmon, honored the sustenance provided by the salmon, and marked the beginning of fishing for the season.29 Meriwether Lewis wrote:

“there was great joy with the natives last night in consequence of the arrival of the salmon; one of those fish was caught; this was the harbinger of good news to them. they informed us that these fish would arrive in great quantities in the course of about 5 days. this fish was dressed and being divided into small peices [sic] was given to each child in the village. this custom is founded in a supersticious [sic] opinion that it will hasten the arrival of the salmon.”30

The in-depth descriptions of preserving salmon and the First Salmon ceremony highlighted the importance of salmon in the lives of people living at Celilo Falls and demonstrated the close connection between the Wasco-Wishram and the Columbia River. However, Lewis’ description of the ceremony illustrated a lack of understanding on the part of the Euro-American explorers.

His journal explained his observations of the event, but failed to include or perhaps even comprehend the cultural significance of the occasion. Furthermore, by classifying the ceremony as superstition, Lewis remained ignorant to the fact that generational knowledge of salmon migration allowed for the people living at Celilo to predict the arrival of salmon.

29 "First Salmon Feast." Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fishing Commission, 2020, 2020, https://www.critfc.org/salmon-culture/tribal-salmon-culture/first-salmon-feast/. 30 Lewis, "Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition: April 19, 1806," 1806.

23 The Corps of Discovery’s descriptions of homes, tombs, salmon curing techniques, and the First Salmon ceremony of the Wasco and Wishram informed readers that Celilo was both inhabited when Lewis and Clark arrived at Celilo Falls and long before. The prevalence of salmon in their entries showed how essential salmon was in the lives of people living at Celilo

Falls and along the Columbia River, while the description of the First Salmon ceremony demonstrated the knowledge that the Wasco-Wishram had of the river and the patterns of annual fish runs. It is important to note that although the descriptions provided by members of the expedition described the outward appearance and customs of the Native peoples living and fishing around Celilo, they did not delve into the cultural significance of the fishery, the salmon ceremony, or the history of the people living there. The American narrative of Celilo Falls as a

Native space began with the observations of the Corps of Discovery and the lack of cultural meaning presented in these entries reflected attitudes that would persist into the twentieth century, leading to the removal of Native people from their ancestral lands.

The second narrative that the Journals of Lewis and Clark created was the perspective of

Celilo Falls as a place of commerce and trade. Celilo would later be referred to by William Clark as a “great mart,” but the significance of the falls as a center for trade in the Pacific Northwest was lost on the party members in the Corps of Discovery during their initial passing through.

However, the journal entries from the group's time at the falls do note that they witnessed trade through communicating with the Native people living at the falls and through the observation of material goods. After William Clark arduously described the process of pounding, drying, and preserving salmon, he wrote that presumably, British and French trappers had traded with the people at Celilo. “Great quantities [of salmon] as they inform us are Sold to the whites [sic]

24 people who visit the mouth of this river as well as to the nativs [sic] below.31 Whitehouse wrote on October 24 about the material goods he saw and having witnessed a biracial child at the

Wasco-Wishram village:

“We conclude that their [sic] must have been some white people among these Indians, as they had among them, a new Copper Tea kettle, beads, small pieces of Copper & a number of other articles We saw also a Child among them, which was a mix'd breed, between a White Man & Indian Women. The fairness of its Skin, & rosey colour, convinced us that it must have been the case, and we have no doubt, but that white Men trade among them.”32

Entries that described the material goods observed at Celilo Falls and the explicit mention of trade showed that the expedition members understood that the people at Celilo traded with Euro-

Americans and other Native groups, but the extent of trade at Celilo was perhaps not realized until they returned to the falls in April 1806.

On April 16, 1806, William Clark wrote about seeing men and women in the village wearing shirts adorned with beads and porcupine quills. “All of those articles they precure from other nations who visit them for the purpose of exchangeing [sic] those articles for their pounded fish of which they prepare great quantities,” he explained. “This is the Great Mart of all this

Country.” Clark continued by listing the various tribes that the Native peoples of Celilo traded with and the other goods he observed: beads, horses, knives, axes, buffalo robes, and more.33

Although the entries from members of the Corps of Discovery wholly glossed over the cultural importance of Celilo Falls, quotes like the one from Clark in April 1806 showed that they understood the social significance of Celilo as a place of commerce and trade. Both the framings

31 Clark, "Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition: October 22, 1805," 1805. 32 Whitehouse, "Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition: October 24, 1805," 1805. 33 Clark, "Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition: April 16, 1806," 1806.

25 of Celilo as a Native space and as place of trade added to the American narrative of the great falls. The Journals of Lewis and Clark did not explicitly assert how trade at the falls could benefit future settlers, but the extent of commerce and trade witnessed by these explorers indirectly signaled to Euro-American readers the potential that Celilo had for their own material gain. However, this would not be enacted until the removal of Native people from the river in

1855.

As much as the observations of the Corps of Discovery at Celilo Falls included descriptions of Wasco and Wishram people, villages, material goods, salmon fishing, and trade, all these elements are overshadowed by the copious mentions of the struggle the party had bypassing the falls and rapids. Upon reaching Celilo Falls and the Narrows, the expedition spent five days portaging around the turbulent river, carrying all their baggage and canoes over land with the help of the Wishrams and Wascos. The entries from the fall of 1805 and the spring of

1806 framed Celilo Falls as an obstacle, a space of torrential and dangerous rapids that made the

Columbia impossible to navigate by boat. This narrative of Celilo Falls as a hindrance to navigation would ultimately persist into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and contribute to the construction of The Dalles Dam.

When they arrived at the top of Celilo Falls on October 22, 1805, many of the men made mention in their journals about the difficulty they had even navigating the rapids above the falls the previous day. Clark wrote that they “halted a fiew minits [sic] to examine the rapids before

[entering it]...all that was verry [sic] dangerous put out all who could not Swim to walk around.”34 Navigation would only become more difficult in the following days. On October 22, the expedition reached the top of the falls and began the arduous process of portaging their

34 Clark, "Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition: October 21, 1805," 1805.

26 canoes and baggage. After stopping to survey the river, Ordway wrote, “we went at carrying the baggage past the . hired Some horses from the natives to take the heavey [sic] baggage past...we got all except the canoes below the falls and camped close under a high range of clifts

[sic] of rocks, where the body of the River beat against it and formed a verry [sic] large eddy.”35

On the same day, Whitehouse described the sound of the falls as “roaring,” so much so that it could “be heard several miles below it.”36 The following day, the expedition was told of a portage route used by the Wascos and Wishrams; the party hauled their canoes a quarter of a mile over the rocks while being bitten by sand fleas and even had to use elk skin ropes to lower the boats down steep cliffs.37 The party remained camped near the Wasco-Wishram village for four days as they slowly carried their belongings past the falls and rapids.

On the return journey in April 1806, the expedition spent nearly a week portaging up river, getting their canoes and belongings past the Long and Short Narrows and Celilo Falls. This time, the party purchased horses to aid in the hauling of their belongings, but it was still back- breaking work. Lewis wrote of ascending the Long Narrows: “[We] employed all hands in transporting our baggage on [our] backs and by means of the four pack horse, over the portage.”38 Even the descriptions of the Wishrams and Wascos living along the rapids add to the perception of the falls as a difficult place to travel through. It was common in the diaries of the expedition members to refer to Native people as “savages,” but their descriptions of the Native people inhabiting the space around Celilo were even more bigoted. Members of the party described the people living next to Celilo as ‘unfriendly,’ and ‘villains’ and made mention that

35 Ordway, "Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition: October 22, 1805," 1805. 36 Whitehouse, "Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition: October 22, 1805," 1805. 37 Clark, "Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition: October 23, 1805," 1805. 38 Lewis, "Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition: April 19, 1806," 1806.

27 items were often stolen from their camps along Celilo Falls and the rapids.39 Clark wrote that in

April, while the party was portaging their supplies, a group of Native people went into their camp and stole a tomahawk, a canoe, and a horse. After the incident, he wrote that Lewis

“informed the Indians that the next man who attempted to steal Should be Shot and thretened

[sic]...that he could kill them in a moment and Set their town on fire.”40 These descriptions of the

Native people at Celilo framed them as more untrustworthy compared to other Indigenous people and would lead to increased racism between the people inhabiting Celilo and future settlers in

The Dalles. On April 21, the Corps of Discovery portaged their last belongings over Celilo Falls and continued their journey eastward.

As Celilo Falls was described in the October 1805 entries and the April 1806 entries, it was clear that the Corps of Discovery characterized their time at the falls as frustrating and laborious, and that the members of the expedition saw Celilo as an obstacle to river navigation.

The eleven-mile stretch of river that reached from Celilo Falls to the present day The Dalles took the party five days to portage both ways and involved carrying boats on their backs, getting bitten by sand fleas, and enduring cold nights by the misty river. Celilo was immediately framed in the mind of the American audience as an unduly problematic space. Sergeant Patrick Gass was the first member of the expedition to have his journal published upon his return in 1807, characterizing the falls as a ‘terrifying’ place: “About the great pitch the appearance of the place is terrifying with vast rocks, and the river below the pitch, foaming through the different channels.”41 His publication sold out and merited subsequent editions over the next half decade and was even translated into French, demonstrating that descriptions of Celilo Falls as a

39 Lewis, "Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition: April 21, 1806," 1806. 40 Clark, "Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition: April 21, 1806," 1806. 41 Gass, "Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition: October 23, 1805," 1805.

28 hindrance to navigation reached a broad Euro-American audience. Both descriptions of the physical river (the torrential rapids, the misty falls, the basalt cliffs) and the prejudiced descriptions of the Indigenous people living at the falls framed Celilo as a difficult space to navigate, physically and socially. The American narrative of Celilo Falls as a hindrance would only be perpetuated more in the writings of future explorers and settlers and would ultimately be used to justify inundation.

Early Traders and the River Changes Hands: 1811-1855

Following the return of the Corps of Discovery, the Columbia River Basin was not immediately settled by Americans; however, fur trappers, travelers, and trading companies such as the had a strong presence in the region by the 1820s. Like the members of the Corps of Discovery Expedition, these Euro-Americans had similar observations and sentiments towards the Indigenous people living at the falls and of the physical falls themselves.

Writers continued to characterize the falls as a Native space and a place of commerce, but the descriptions of the Wishrams at Celilo became increasingly prejudiced and negative. The authors of the early and mid-nineteenth century also continued to portray the physical falls themselves as a hindrance to navigation. As more Euro-Americans came into the Columbia Basin, more and more of the descriptions of Celilo began to also focus on the power of the river in the Dalles-

Celilo Reach.

The owner of the Pacific Fur Company, , imagined controlling the by building a series of fur forts across the country to aid in the trade of North American furs with countries such as China and Russia. Astor received financial support from the North

West Company, a Montreal based trading conglomerate, and founded the Pacific Fur Company

29 in 1810. The following year, Astor sent two expeditions into the to build a trade outpost at the mouth of the Columbia River. Built in the spring of 1812 and intended as a trading-hub for and seal furs, became the first permanent white settlement in

Oregon Territory. The ambitions of Astor were perhaps too lofty, and, with the inception of the

War of 1812, the company faced an uncertain future. Unable to contact Astor who resided in

New York, partners in Astoria decided to dissolve the company in 1814.42 Although the Pacific

Fur Company failed as an enterprise, Astor hoped to document the company, as it was the first

American fur company on the Pacific Coast. In 1834, Astor hired American writer and essayist,

Washington Irving to write a book that recounted the history of the Pacific Fur Company. Using the Journals of Lewis and Clark and the writings of other explorers and fur trappers, Irving wrote and published Astoria in 1836. Irving’s book became a best-seller; it was translated into three other languages and “introduced more readers to the Pacific Northwest than any single book up to that time.”43 Descriptions of Celilo Falls, the Long and Short Narrows, and of the Wishram were present in the book and characterized the physical river and the Indigenous people around the falls as a great impediment to American commerce. Because of the popularity of the book, the conceptualization of Celilo as a barrier to river navigation was further solidified in the

American mindset. Irving characterized Lewis and Clark’s bypassing of Celilo Falls and the

Long and Short Narrows as a brave and daring venture: “Through this tremendous channel the intrepid explorers of the river, Lewis and Clarke [sic], passed in their boats; the danger being, not from the rocks, but from the great surges and whirlpools.” Using the quote of an unnamed trader, he went on to describe the Wishrams living at Celilo Falls as “saucy, impudent rascals, who will

42 "Pacific Fur Company." The Oregon Encyclopedia, The Oregon Historical Society and Portland State University, 2019, 2020, https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/pacific_fur_company/#.X9feXy1h1p8. 43 "Astoria (Book 1836)." The Oregon Encyclopedia, The Oregon Historical Society and Portland State University, 2019, 2020, https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/astoria_washington_irvings_book/#.X9fQky1h00o.

30 steal when they can, and pillage whenever a weak party falls in their power.”44 Descriptions like these of Celilo differentiated the space from other Native places along the Columbia River.

Irving’s writings situated Celilo as more than just a space of physical geography, but also as a space of conflict, where intellect was needed to navigate not only the falls, but also the social obstacles created by the Native people living there.45 As Euro-Americans documented the once mysterious and previously unexplored Pacific Northwest, disdain for Native people grew, as they represented an obstacle to American settler colonialism and commerce.

Another American whose writings constructed the narratives of Celilo was Alexander

Ross, a trader who wrote extensively about his enterprises along the Columbia River. Ross was an employee of the Pacific Fur Company who helped establish the trading outpost in Astoria. His journals were used extensively by Irving to publish Astoria, but Ross published his own memoir,

Adventures of the First Settlers on the Oregon or Columbia River in 1849.46 In 1811, Ross and members of Astor’s expedition travelled forty-two days upriver to the mouth of the Okanogan

River in present day Northern Washington. Upon reaching the Long and Short Narrows and

Celilo Falls, Ross had many similar observations and experiences as those of the Corps of

Discovery. Ross wrote of the village at the Long Narrows as a populous location on the river where trade and gambling occurred:

“The main camp of the Indians is situated at the head of the narrows, and may contain, during the salmon season, 3,000 souls, or more; but the constant inhabitants of the place do not exceed 100 persons, and are called Wy-am-pams; the rest are all foreigners from different tribes throughout the country, who resort hither, not for the purpose of catching salmon, but chiefly for gambling and speculation; for trade and traffic...The long

44 Irving, Washington. Astoria. Project Gutenberg, 1836. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1371/1371-h/1371-h.htm. 45 Lang, William L. "The Meaning of Falling Water: Celilo Falls and the Dalles in Historical Literature." (2007): 569. 46 Alexander Ross, Adventures of the First Settlers on the Oregon or Columbia River, 1810-1813 (Cleveland, Ohio: The Arthur H. Clark Company, 1904), Pdf. https://www.loc.gov/item/04027135/.

31 narrows, therefore, is the great emporium or mart of the Columbia, and the general theatre of gambling and roguery.”47

The language of this passage mirrored the descriptions of Lewis and Clark, which suggests that

Ross likely read their journals. It also further distinguished the people living at Celilo as Wyam, which demonstrated that Ross probably gave more attention than the members of the Corps of

Discovery did when distinguishing different Native people along the Columbia. When describing the physical toll of portaging the Long Narrows, Ross characterized it as a matter of life and death: “It was no ordinary task. Under any other circumstances it could never be performed; but it was too much; the effort was almost beyond human strength.”48 Luckily for Ross and his crew, due to flooding along the river, Celilo Falls was “barely perceptible.” Although the current was still strong, they were able to get past the great cataracts while remaining in their boats.49 Ross’ description of the Long Narrows added to the perception of Celilo Falls as a Native space—a reader cannot ignore the copious descriptions, albeit prejudiced, of the many Indigenous people living and trading at the falls. Similarly, Ross’ recounting of the physical labor required to get past the Long Narrows and the falls demonstrated that the powerful current of the Columbia and especially the rapids at Celilo were seen as a barrier to eased river navigation and transportation.

When environmental historian Richard White analyzed the Euro-American settlement of the Columbia nearly two centuries later, he portrayed the river, the salmon that swim within it, and the men who pushed their way against the current in terms of exertion of energy and power.

Examining Ross’ 400-mile journey up the Columbia, he wrote that the power of the river was measured by the physical work exerted to push their boats upriver, to portage their belongings, and in a sense ‘conquer’ nature. According to White, “The river upset the Astorians’ boat; it

47 Ross, Alexander, Adventures of the First Settlers on the Oregon or Columbia River, 1810-1813, 94. 48 Ross, Alexander, Adventures of the First Settlers on the Oregon or Columbia River, 1810-1813, 94. 49 Ibid, 97.

32 dunked the men, drenched them, grounded them and delayed them.”50 Through White’s lens, the narrative of Celilo and the rapids of the Columbia acting as hindrance to navigation can be reframed and thought about in terms of power. To make the river truly navigable for Americans, the power of the river had to be in some way overcome or tamed.

Samuel Parker, a Protestant minister who travelled to the Columbia River in 1835, was the first American to explicitly write about Celilo Falls and the Columbia River in terms of power and potential energy. In his memoir, among familiar descriptions of fishing and portaging he wrote, “the Falls and La Dalles furnish a situation for water power equal to any in any part of the world.”51 Parker saw the potential for the Columbia River to be a future source of manufacturing power. Although the fur trade was still the main economic interest for Euro-

Americans in the Pacific Northwest, Parker’s comment situated the reader in the time period of his publication and reified the potential for power generation at Celilo Falls. At the height of the industrial revolution, it was common for North American factories, especially in the Northeast, to be built along fast-flowing rivers and streams to provide power for manufacturing.

Waterwheels spinning in the currents of rivers would generate the energy needed to produce goods.52 Despite Parker’s examinations, proposals to harness the power of the river at Celilo and

The Dalles would not be made until the early twentieth century; however, his observations can be considered the beginning of a new narrative surrounding Celilo Falls. Potential for power and manufacturing at The Dalles would be a key justification used by Americans when deciding to construct The Dalles Dam.

50 White, Richard. The Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River. (1995): 6-7. 51 Samuel Parker, Journal of an Exploring Tour Beyond the Rocky Mountains (Published by the Author, 1838), 131. 52 Lang, William L. "The Meaning of Falling Water.” 570.

33 Up until this point, the dominant narratives that surrounded Celilo Falls were still the ones begun by the writings of the Corps of Discovery: Celilo Falls as a Native space, a place of commerce, and as an obstacle to river navigation. Yet in all the writings by Euro-Americans in the early nineteenth century, there is little recognition of Celilo Falls as more than merely a

Native inhabited space. The cultural relevance and importance of Celilo to Native peoples were forgotten or perhaps not even deemed worthy when explorers like William Clark wrote in depth descriptions of salmon-drying techniques or of the labor of portaging the roiling rapids. At this time in American history, Native cultures were seen as obsolete and barbaric. This sentiment is palpable in the tone that members of the Corps of Discovery wrote about the people living at

Celilo; however, a reader delving into the writings of early explorers and traders would have a difficult time arguing that Native peoples did not hold control over Celilo Falls and the greater

Columbia River Basin.

By the 1830s, westward expansion by the United States had displaced many Native peoples from their ancestral lands. On May 28, 1830, President Andrew Jackson signed the

Indian Removal Act which allowed the United States to displace southern Native communities to federal lands west of the Mississippi River, so white Americans could build settlements on ancestral land.53 The 1830 Act continued the systematic displacement and genocide of Native people by the United States. The well-known Trail of Tears took the lives of over 4,000

Cherokee people.54 The systematic removal of Indigenous people continued throughout the

United States and affiliated territories; in 1855, the ethos of these legislations led to the removal of the Indigenous people living in the Columbia River Basin.

53 "An Act to provide for an exchange of lands with the Indians residing in any of the states or territories, and for their removal west of the river Mississippi," in Statutes at Large, 21st Congress, 1st Session (1830). 54 "Trail of Tears." Museum of the Cherokee Indian, 2020, 2020, https://www.cherokeemuseum.org/archives/era/trail-of-tears.

34 Prior to physical removal of Native people and even before the arrival of the Corps of

Discovery, Euro-American trappers and traders had already brought with them Euro-American diseases that killed great swaths of the Indigenous population. Smallpox had already devastated

Chinooks, the tribe that lived along the lower Columbia, by the time the Lewis and Clark

Expedition arrived. In the 1830s, traders in the Hudson Bay Company coming from California brought with them malaria, killing up to 90 percent of people who became ill. Before the arrival of Euro-American diseases, as many as 10,000 Native people may have lived in the eleven mile stretch of the Dalles-Celilo reach.55 It is estimated that the Native population of the Columbia

River Plateau as a whole was reduced by as much as 50 percent by 1855.56 The Indigenous population around the Columbia River would continue to reduce with the forced cession of

Native lands by the U.S. Government.

Physical removal of Indigenous peoples living along the Columbia River began in 1855 when the Nez Perce, Umatilla, Yakama, and Warm Springs tribes signed treaties with the

Territories of Oregon and Washington to cede lands to the U.S. Government. Combined, the four tribes lost their rights to nearly forty-five million acres of land and all were pushed onto reservations away from the river—the largest being the 1.2 million-acre Yakama reservation in present day central Washington.57 Beyond removing Native people from their ancestral lands along the Columbia River, the treaties also merged separate tribes and bands and forced them into the four aforementioned “nations.” Americans had recognized that distinct bands and tribes lived along the river as early as 1811, when Alexander Ross observed that the Native people at

55 Katrine Barber, Death of Celilo Falls (Seattle, WA: Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest in association with University of Washington Press, 2005), 20-21. 56 White, Richard. The Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River. (1995): 26-27. 57 "Member Tribes Overview." Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fishing Commission, 2020, 2020, https://www.critfc.org/member_tribes_overview/. See map in Appendix.

35 the Long Narrows “were not all one people, with one interest, or under one control.”58 The 1855

Treaty with the Yakama listed fourteen separate tribes and bands, yet it stated that these

“confederated tribes and bands of Indians...for the purposes of this treaty, are to be considered as one nation, under the name of ‘Yakama.’”59 Today, the Wasco and Wyam are part of the

Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation of Oregon and the Wishram are part of the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation. Although the groups living in the

Columbia River do have fairly similar languages and a cultural and economic relationship to salmon, there are differences in their linguistic and cultural practices. The 1855 treaties created monolithic groups that failed to recognize the individual cultures and communities of Native people living in the Columbia River Basin and can be understood as a form of cultural erasure and dispossession.

Although the treaties forced the cession of millions of acres of land and obligated Native people to relocate to reservations, the Indigenous people who fished at Celilo for thousands of years retained their right to continue fishing at the falls. In all four treaties, a subsection titled

“Privileges secured to Indians” noted that Indigenous people maintained the “exclusive right to taking fish...at all usual and accustomed places.”60 The same section also allowed for the construction of temporary buildings along the river to cure fish. Someone reading the 1855 treaties might understand the permission to keep fishing as a recognition by the United States of the cultural importance of fishing and salmon in the lives of Native people living along the

Columbia. In reality, the tribes had to fight to retain these rights by stipulating the rights were

58 Ross, Alexander, Adventures of the First Settlers on the Oregon or Columbia River, 1810-1813, 93. 59 "Yakama Indians: Treaty Between the United States and the Yakama Nation of Indians. Cession of Lands to the United State; reservations; payments by the United States; annuities; schools,&c.," in U.S. Statutes at Large 12, no. Main Section (1855), 951. 60 "Yakama Indians: Treaty Between the United States and the Yakama Nation of Indians. (1855), 953.

36 guaranteed before the signing of the treaty.61 Furthermore, because the reservations were constructed some eighty miles or more from the river, there was decreased access to Celilo Falls and other usual and accustomed fishing places along the Columbia River. The treaties of 1855 can be seen as a turning point, as the moment when Native space and wealth was fundamentally transferred to the hands white Americans.

One substantive example of this transference of power from Native people along the

Columbia River to Americans was the incorporation of The Dalles in 1857. Methodists first built a mission at the site in the 1830s and then the U.S. Army built Fort Dalles in 1850—establishing a military presence in the area which oversaw relocation of Native Americans and protected

American settlers.62 Katrine Barber, the preeminent scholar of Celilo Falls, characterized The

Dalles similarly to the ways in which early explorers once characterized the falls. Barber wrote that The Dalles was a “trade center,” although its primary purpose was to sell goods to miners and act as an agricultural settlement where cherries, apricots, and wheat was grown and harvested by the growing white-American population.63 Lastly, and most importantly, the location of The Dalles made the town a hub for river transportation. The Oregon Steam

Navigation Company (OSN) was founded in 1860 and constructed portage railways that allowed commercial goods to be shipped from west of the Cascades to the inland United States.64 Settlers saw potential for The Dalles to someday be an international port that could connect the interior

Pacific Northwest to the Pacific Ocean—the largest problem that stood in the way of these ambitions was the power and force of the Columbia River.

61 "Member Tribes Overview." Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fishing Commission, 2020, 2020, https://www.critfc.org/member_tribes_overview/. 62 Katrine Barber, Death of Celilo Falls (Seattle, WA: Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest in association with University of Washington Press, 2005), 25. 63 Barber, Katrine, Death of Celilo Falls. 25-26. 64 Lang, William L. "The Meaning of Falling Water.” 571.

37 Analyzing the journal entries from the Corps of Discovery and accounts from Euro-

American explorers and settlers is a necessary first step to understanding the narratives that surrounded Celilo Falls. When historian William Lang wrote about Celilo Falls, he stated that

“no place stands still in meaning. Human experiences, perceptions, and purposes attached to geographical locations change over time and alters the ways places relate to the lives of individuals and communities.”65 The narratives of Celilo Falls that began in the journals of

Lewis and Clark informed what the place meant to subsequent American settlers, to citizens in

The Dalles, and within the broader American mindset in perpetuum. The framings of Celilo Falls as a Native space and a place of economical wealth and commerce continued into the following century; however, the conception of Celilo Falls as a Native center for commerce and trade would gradually change over the course of the next 150 years as Indigenous peoples were forced onto reservations, the fishing rights to Celilo became contested, and white-Americans gained control over the river. The writings of explorers like Lewis and Clark observed the Native people and geography of the falls, but the writings of later traders and explorers would frame the falls as a space ripe for conquest, where resources once belonging to Native people would forcibly shift to the hands of white Americans. As the nineteenth century progressed, Celilo Falls would become a contested space and the narratives started in the era of Lewis and Clark would begin to change. Celilo was still technically considered Native space and a place of wealth, as stipulated by the 1855 treaties, but as The Dalles was incorporated and more white people laid claim to the space, control over the river began to shift and Indigenous people were dispossessed of their lands. The narrative of Celilo as a barrier to navigation would only solidify further as Americans in The Dalles expanded commercial enterprises along the river. Ultimately, it was the narrative

65 Lang, William L. "The Meaning of Falling Water.” 566.

38 of the falls as problematic space, specifically as an impediment to navigating the river, combined with a yearning for power generation that would lead to the construction of The Dalles Dam and the inundation of Celilo Falls.

39 Chapter 2: Pre-Inundation

Art and the Aesthetic Appreciation of the Columbia River

Euro-Americans in the mid-nineteenth century imagined the Columbia River as a future maritime highway to transport goods across the Pacific Northwest. At The Dalles in particular,

Americans conceptualized Celilo Falls and the Native people that lived there as a hindrance to navigation, trade, and American settlement. However, this utilitarian meaning was not the only one assigned to the Columbia River and the falls during this era. During the middle part of the nineteenth century, many Euro-American artists were inspired by the Romanticism movement of

Europe and began creating landscape paintings that showcased the beauty and sublimity of the newly settled United States.66 These works portrayed the West and the Columbia River as aesthetically pleasing and virtually uninhabited landscapes, which acted as a further colonization of the space.

American landscape painting began in the late 1820s with the work of Thomas Cole, an

Anglo-American painter who became famous for his renditions of the Hudson River Valley and

Catskill Mountains, which realistically depicted the dramatic beauty of nature in tandem with the application of the sublime, attempting to elicit the strongest emotions from the viewer.67

Landscape art of the nineteenth century defined national identity by using depictions of the

“wilderness” as a symbol for the nation's potential. The renditions of mountains, rivers, and acted as a way for Americans to comfortably experience the mysterious and frightful

66 Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser, Hudson River School: Masterworks from the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art (New Haven: Yale University Press in association with the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, 2003), 3. 67 Kevin J. Avery, "The Hudson River School," Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History (October 2004). https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/hurs/hd_hurs.htm.

40 elements of the nation’s wilderness.68 Over the course of the mid-nineteenth century, American landscape art would proliferate westward and inform how white audiences perceived Celilo

Falls.

German-American artist Albert Bierstadt was part of the second wave of the Hudson

River artists who travelled westward to capture the landscapes of the pristine and untouched wilderness of the western United States. From 1859 to the 1890s, Bierstadt travelled to the West to paint the landscapes of Yosemite Valley, the Rocky Mountains, and the Columbia River

Gorge. For artists like Bierstadt, the West acted both as an escape from the heavily painted landscape of the Northeast and a respite from the instability of the country during the Civil

War.69 Bierstadt’s work was characterized by its panoramic images of clouded mountains, sun- dappled valleys, and reflective waters.70 One of Bierstadt’s most famous paintings was his 1865 rendition of Mt. Hood. The ten-foot-wide by six-foot-tall canvas portrayed the snowy slopes of

Mt. Hood towering over the Columbia River and the verdant forests of the Columbia River

Gorge.71 In his other paintings of the river, Bierstadt included renditions of Native people, which was common in the style of American landscape paintings. Inclusion of non-specified Native peoples romanticized the scenes and implied that the nature of the American landscape remained untouched and that Indigenous people and the wilderness were one in the same.72

Bierstadt’s paintings of the West reached a broad audience, both on the East coast of the

United States and internationally. In 1867, Bierstadt travelled to England and was invited to

68 Kornhauser, Hudson River School: Masterworks from the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, 6. 69 Angela Miller, "Albert Bierstadt, Landscape Aesthetics, and the Meanings of the West in the Civil War Era," Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 27, no. 1 (2001): 41, https://doi.org/10.2307/4102838, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4102838, 45. 70 Ibid, 48. 71 Albert Bierstadt, , Oregon, 1865. 182.88 x 304.8 cm. 72 Kornhauser, Hudson River School: Masterworks from the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, 6.

41 privately showcase a collection of his paintings to Queen Victoria.73 In a sense, Bierstadt’s paintings created a new American narrative of the Columbia River and the Pacific Northwest.

Professor Melinda Marie Jetté, an Oregon historian, described the work of artists, writers, and even cartographers of this era as contributing to the creation of an “Oregon of the mind.” This conceptualization of vast and untouched landscapes invited more American settlers to venture westward.74 Through the artistic mastery of Oregon landscape, Bierstadt’s paintings began an artistic admiration of the Columbia River that contributed to the American perception of the river as a beautiful space, but also symbolized a further colonization of the land by presenting the space as virtually uninhabited.

Another artistic medium that was used to capture the landscape of the Columbia and further the narrative of the river as a place of aesthetic appeal was photography. In 1867,

Carleton Watkins, a based photographer, travelled up the Columbia River on an

Oregon Steam Navigation Company (OSN) boat capturing images of the river, the gorge, and waterfalls. Watkins was inspired by Bierstadt’s works and his photographs reflected a mastery over distribution of light and shadows to capture more detailed and individual elements of the landscape.75 One of his photos, titled “Passage of the Dalles,” showed a portage route in the

Narrows: huge basalt cliffs accentuated the backdrop and the long exposure made the water appear ghostly.76 Historian William Lang wrote that Watkins’ photos likely “publicized the area more than any textual description” and “led to an aesthetic appreciation of the Columbia and its landscapes.”77 Another photographer, Benjamin A. Giffords, moved to The Dalles in 1895 and

73 "Albert Bierstadt," National Gallery of Art, updated 2021, https://www.nga.gov/collection/artist- info.6707.html#biography. 74 Melinda Marie Jetté, Rethinking Oregon Settlement (Oregon Historical Society, 2019). 75 Miller, "Albert Bierstadt, Landscape Aesthetics, and the Meanings of the West in the Civil War Era," 48. 76 Carleton E. Watkins, Passage of the Dalles, Oregon. 77 Lang, "The Meaning of Falling Water: Celilo Falls and the Dalles in Historical Literature," 572.

42 spent much of his career photographing Celilo Falls and the Native peoples that lived there. The

OSN and railroad companies used photos of Celilo in their promotional materials, which drew tourists to travel up the river to experience the “marvelous falls.”78 Although artistic representations of the river and Celilo Falls in paintings and photography did showcase the natural beauty of the landscape—and in the case of Giffords, the Native people living there— these artistic works reiterated the mindset of American control over the Columbia River.

Bierstadt’s paintings captured the beauty of the Columbia River and can be understood as a mastery of the landscape, but his paintings often inferred that the land was nearly uninhabited.

This omission of Indigenous people from his paintings added to the “Oregon of the mind,” a romanticized space that was untouched and inviting to white settlers. Additionally, photographers were able to publicize the river to a broader audience, which in turn, brought more settlers and tourists to the Pacific Northwest. Art in the mid to late-nineteenth century provided a new American perspective of Celilo Falls and the river as an aesthetic place. This conceptualization of the Columbia River as a beautiful and uninhabited landscape was a tool used to further colonize the space.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Navigation Development

Despite the new narrative created by artists that recognized the beauty and aesthetic appeal of Columbia River and Celilo Falls while symbolizing the urge to control the perception of the river, the dominant American narrative at the turn of the century was still that of Celilo

Falls and the Narrows as a hindrance to river navigation. Although the 1855 treaties had

78 Lang, "The Meaning of Falling Water: Celilo Falls and the Dalles in Historical Literature," 572.

43 significantly decreased the number of people living at the falls, Native people still fished in the

Dalles-Celilo Reach, which was still conceptualized as an Indigenous space and place of wealth.

Near the end of the nineteenth century, discussions on how to transport goods through the

Dalles-Celilo Reach began with studies by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE).

The USACE was active in the Pacific Northwest as early as 1832, when Captain

Benjamin Bonneville journeyed to the Oregon territory to scout the land for agriculture, timber, and fur trading possibilities. Bonneville saw the promise of American settlement around the

Columbia River, but like the explorers before him, he perceived the rapids of the Columbia as a major hindrance. He wrote to his superiors, “As to the cultivation of the bottoms of the

Columbia, the lands are of the best, the timber abundant, but it is deluged at the rise of the river.”79 The USACE was vital during the nineteenth century, as it established routes and built wagon roads used during the , constructed military forts to secure the area from attack by Native peoples, and dredged the to improve the port at Portland.80

From 1871 to 1900, the USACE Portland District dredged rivers, removed snags and rocks, and surveyed rapids around the Pacific Northwest. William F. Willingham, the leading historian of the USACE Portland District, wrote that a main ambition of the Corps starting in 1871 was improving river navigation between Portland and Lewiston, Idaho, so that resources from mining and agriculture on the Columbia River Plateau could more easily be shipped from the interior to the coast.81 By 1902, the rapids and falls in the Dalles-Celilo Reach were the only remaining

79 William F. Willingham, Army Engineers and the Development of Oregon: A History of the Portland District U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Portland, 1983), 3. 80 Ibid, 2-12. 81 "U.S. Army Corps of Engineers " The Oregon Encyclopedia, 2021, accessed March 8, 2021, https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/u_s__army_corps_of_engineers/#.YE4_95NKhp8.

44 obstruction to river navigation on the Columbia River between the Pacific Ocean and Priest

Rapids—407 miles upriver in central Washington.82

Local lobbying from the OSN and other business leaders in Portland and The Dalles sought to tame the Columbia River to make it accessible for transportation of resources along the river. From the 1860s to the 1880s, railroad companies built tracks that portaged goods around the rapids of the Columbia, but as such, they had a monopoly over transporting goods and people and often set high prices.83 In 1874, the Corps reported that building a system of canals and locks to overcome the Dalles-Celilo Reach was a feasible option. In 1879 and 1882, further studies examined the practicality of the canal, but in 1889, a group of USACE engineers recommended that building a railway that could portage boats from the base of the rapids to above Celilo Falls would be a cheaper solution. Although Congress appropriated some funding for the project in

1896, construction never began due to the slow process of acquiring the land along the shore. In

1903, the Corps submitted a final plan to build a canal from The Dalles to the top of Celilo Falls.

The Dalles- took ten years to complete and was opened in 1915 with the promise of allowing steam ships to navigate above the rapids to carry passengers and agricultural commodities.84

The completion of the canal was celebrated as the beginning of a new era in river navigation: 25,000 people attended the opening of the eight-mile canal and Joseph N. Teal, a prominent Portland attorney and supporter of waterway development, gave the keynote address where he advocated for the future development of the river. Speaking about future dams that

82 "History of the Portland District, 1871-1996," accessed March 11, 2021, https://www.nwp.usace.army.mil/About/History/. 83 Paul R. Josephson, Industrialized nature: brute force technology and the transformation of the natural world (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2002), 43. 84 Willingham, Army Engineers, 75-76.

45 would provide electricity and improve navigation he said, “When it is accomplished...the Inland

Empire will be an empire in fact as well as in name — an empire of industry, of commerce, of manufacture and agriculture; and the valleys of the Columbia and Snake will have become one vast garden, full of happy homes and contented and industrious people.”85 Despite the optimism, there was one glaring issue: before construction of the canal, no commerce actually existed above Celilo Falls. The engineers who proposed the plan hoped that easing navigation would create commerce above the falls and make it possible to compete with the prices of railroad transportation rates, but to no avail. Although farmers did begin growing wheat in greater quantities above Celilo Falls, the railroads lowered their rates, making steamboats obsolete.86

From the 1920s to the early 1930s, virtually no commercial boats actually used the Dalles-Celilo

Canal to transport wheat.87 But while the canal was an economic failure that did not result in any significant increase in shipping, the construction of the Dalles-Celilo Canal reiterated the

American narrative that Celilo Falls was a hindrance to navigation that needed to be overcome in order to improve economic growth in the Columbia River region, paving the way for even more ambitious projects. Starting in the 1920s, the narratives surrounding Celilo Falls would begin to shift from the one-dimensional issue of improving river navigation to a more robust solution for transportation, hydroelectricity, and manufacturing.

85 Joseph N. Teal, "Address of Joseph N. Teal," The Quarterly of the Oregon Historical Society 16, no. 2 (1915): 131, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20609996. 86 White, The Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River, 37. 87 Willingham, Army Engineers, 77.

46 Shifting Narratives of Celilo Falls

Samuel Parker, the Protestant minister who travelled up the Columbia River in 1835, had written of the potential for water power at The Dalles, but it was not until 1900 that federal engineers surveyed the site at the base of the rapids as a site for a future dam that would both improve navigation and provide a constant source of hydroelectricity.88 In a 1912 report to the

Governor of Oregon, state engineer John H. Lewis proposed building a dam at The Dalles that would have the potential to power a city thirteen times bigger than Portland. Lewis characterized the unused power of water as “white coal” and wrote that $144 million was being wasted annually in the “unused water powers of Oregon.”89 Later in his report, he wrote that “the largest, and perhaps the cheapest power project in the world is located in the Columbia River, near The Dalles, Oregon.”90 However, the issue of his proposal reflected the issue of the nearly finished Dalles-Celilo Canal: Portland, The Dalles, and the rest of Oregon did not have the population or a manufacturing need for that amount of power.91 Lewis admitted that it might take several hundred years until commercial enterprises in Oregon warranted the construction for such a project. To overcome the issue, Lewis’ report stipulated that construction of a hydroelectric dam at the site would create industries not yet present in Oregon. The long list included iron and steel manufacturing, wood distillation, making fertilizer by capturing atmospheric nitrogen, manufacturing innumerable chemicals and composites, and providing heat and power to homes, farms, and factories.92

88 Lang, "The Meaning of Falling Water: Celilo Falls and the Dalles in Historical Literature," 573. 89 John Howard Lewis, V. H. Reineking, and L. F. Harza, ... The Columbia River power project near the Dalles, Oregon, Oregon. State engineer. Bulletinno. 3, ([Salem, Or.: W.S. Duniway, state printer, 1913), 1. //catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100204444 http://hdl.handle.net/2027/uiug.30112088590200. 90 Ibid, 17. 91 White, The Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River, 50. 92 Lewis, Reineking, and Harza, ... The Columbia River power project near the Dalles, Oregon, 23-26.

47 The report also admitted that completion of the dam would inundate the Dalles-Celilo

Canal, a good portion of existing railroad along the river, and Celilo Falls. Yet, Lewis made no mention of the Native people who would lose their historic fishing sites and homes in the flood.

Instead, the engineer included a peculiar sentence that seemed to blend the aesthetic imagination of painters and photographers with the utilitarian considerations that had long defined American conceptualizations of the falls, explaining, “The construction of this power plant will not destroy a waterfall of great scenic beauty, but will, on the contrary, create one which at the low stage of the river will equal one-half the height of Niagara Falls. It will involve the absolute control of the mighty river.”93 By favorably comparing the proposed dam spillway to the falls, Lewis underscored how generations of American had perceived Celilo. In his mind, having a man-made structure that would provide benefits such as power and transportation rivaled the beauty of a natural waterfall and even bore comparison to the famous Niagara. To people like Lewis, the inundation of Celilo Falls would be a necessary consequence for the sake of future manufacturing and rural electrification, and the dam itself would provide the function of control over the river, without compromising the sublime appeal of the Columbia.

Lewis’ idea to build a dam at The Dalles was not immediately put into action, but it soon became part of a larger conversation about putting American rivers to work that was amplified by World War I. The war exposed the flaws of the nation’s energy system, as coal-powered factories struggled to keep pace with skyrocketing production demands. A shortage of coal cars and heavy winter storms debilitated many railroads in 1917, forcing some factories to shut down.

Made apparent by wartime exigencies, these issues demonstrated that individual factories

93 Lewis, Reineking, and Harza, ... The Columbia River power project near the Dalles, Oregon, 19.

48 producing their own power through coal was not feasible, whereas central power-producing locations, like dams, could reliably generate electricity for a multitude of surrounding factories.94

Throughout the nineteenth century, Celilo Falls and the Narrows were considered a hindrance to river navigation. Now, with the prospects of hydroelectric generation powering factories and rural communities made Celilo Falls an untapped resource that was essential to future progress. During the 1920s, the Corps began to shift their focus from river transportation projects to “multiuse projects that could be justified from several angles because they benefitted a variety of interest groups.”95 In 1927, Congress appropriated funds for the USACE to survey the national river system and document locations that showed potential for a variety of projects: hydropower, flood control, navigation, and irrigation.96 The final report, published in 1932, was titled the “308 Report” and laid out a detailed plan for the construction of ten major dams along the Columbia River that would provide hydroelectric power and enhanced navigation.97 In

September of that year, presidential candidate Franklin D. Roosevelt gave a campaign speech in

Portland underscoring the imperative to build dams. As governor of New York, Roosevelt had promoted hydropower development—now as a candidate for the presidency, he supported the concept of federally financed hydroelectric power projects on rivers throughout the United

States.98 Emphasizing his campaign message, Roosevelt spoke about his promised “new deal for

94 White, The Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River, 50-51. 95 Barber, Death of Celilo Falls, 31. 96 Willingham, "U.S. Army Corps of Engineers ". 97 Lang, "The Meaning of Falling Water: Celilo Falls and the Dalles in Historical Literature," 576. 98 "Bonneville Power Administration: History," Northwest Power and Conservation Council, 2021, https://www.nwcouncil.org/reports/columbia-river- history/bpahistory#:~:text=Roosevelt%20was%20particularly%20interested%20in%20the%20Columbia%20River. &text=Congress%20approved%20the%20Bonneville%20Project,federal%20dams%20and%20%E2%80%9C…

49 the American people” to combat the ongoing .99 Towards the end of his speech,

Roosevelt spoke about the potential of hydroelectric power on the Columbia and its benefits:

“We have, as all of you in this section of the country know, the vast possibilities of power development on the Columbia River. And I state, in definite and certain terms, that the next great hydro-electric development to be undertaken by the Federal Government must be that on the Columbia River. This vast water power can be of incalculable value to this whole section of the country. It means cheap manufacturing production, economy and comfort on the farm and in the household.”100

Roosevelt’s speech demonstrated that construction of dams with hydroelectric capabilities was not only a local desire, but also part of a larger national conversation of harnessing the energy of

America’s waterways, made all the more urgent by the dire economic circumstances. In 1933, representatives from Oregon lobbied for funding to build Bonneville Dam just forty miles upriver from Portland; in 1935, Congress authorized the project, which was to be built by the

USACE.101

Approval for the Bonneville Dam signaled the impending destruction of Celilo Falls.

Although the majority of people supported construction of the dam, there was pushback from the commercial fishermen, the Oregon Fish Commission, and Native people. This alliance against

Bonneville Dam would closely mirror the same parties who would be opposed to The Dalles

Dam two decades later. Since the 1840s, the Oregon Fish Commission had lobbied to make it illegal to dam rivers and streams supporting salmon without providing passage for the fish—now they worried that the Bonneville Dam would make it impossible for salmon to spawn

99 Franklin D. Roosevelt, "Campaign Address in Portland, Oregon on Public Utilities and Development of Hydro- Electric Power," (Portland, OR: The American Presidency Project, September 21, 1932). https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/campaign-address-portland-oregon-public-utilities-and-development- hydro-electric-power. 100 Ibid. 101 Willingham, Army Engineers, 95….Over the course of the next forty years, thirteen dams with hydroelectric capabilities would be built on the mainstem of the Columbia River, including The Dalles Dam.

50 upstream.102 The Commission demanded that systems for fish passage be included in dam construction and the USACE, already two years into construction, added a $7 million system of fish ladders and elevators to the dam. Despite this, later reports showed that fish mortality rates at Bonneville were near 15 percent of the total migrating population.103 Native people opposed the dam, arguing that it would have a negative impact on salmon migration and flood traditional

Indigenous fishing sites. Unlike the Commission’s concern, which was eventually handled by the

USACE, nothing was done to respond to the concerns of Native people. In April 1937, just six months before completion of the dam, the superintendent of the Umatilla Agency under the

Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) sent a letter to the commissioner of the BIA, stating that there were concerns that closing the gates of the Bonneville Dam would flood fishing sites in violation of the 1855 treaties.104 In the last week of August, a month before completion of the dam, the

BIA collected affidavits from thirty Native fishers who would lose their fishing sites in the backwaters of the Bonneville Dam. The main argument in their case against the USACE was that loss of the fishing sites would take a main source of income from Native people.105

On September 28, 1937, President Roosevelt pushed the button to start hydroelectric generation at Bonneville. In his dedication speech, the president extolled—and perhaps exaggerated—the benefits of the Bonneville Dam, promising that its power would be widely distributed through the region to transform rural communities throughout the Pacific Northwest.

He declared, “In the construction of this dam, we have had our eyes on the future of this nation.

Its cost will be returned to the people of the United States many times over in the improvement

102 "Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife History, 1792-2011," Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, 2011, accessed March 12, 2021, https://www.dfw.state.or.us/agency/history.asp. 103 Willingham, Army Engineers, 195-197. 104 Roberta Ulrich, Empty Nets: Indians, Dams, and the Columbia River, ed. William L. Lang, Culture and Environment Series, (Corvallis, OR: Oregon State University Press, 1999), 17. 105 Ibid, 23-24.

51 of navigation and transportation, the cheapening of power and the distribution of that power to hundreds of small communities.”106

Roosevelt’s promise that electricity generated from the Bonneville Dam would be widely distributed conflicted with the nation’s current energy distribution system. During the 1930s, power was produced and distributed by private utility companies that rarely serviced rural areas due to higher maintenance costs. As such, one of the main goals of the Bonneville project was to provide electricity to rural towns and farms at an affordable rate. The Pacific Northwest Regional

Planning Commission (NWRPC) was founded in 1934 to study how large public work projects should be managed after construction. The NWRPC recommended the creation of a federal corporation that would be in charge of operating federal power facilities and distributing power at uniform wholesale rates for entire areas. This “postage-stamp” rate would make it possible for rural communities along the Columbia River to receive electricity from public works like the

Bonneville Dam.107

In August 1937, Congress passed the Bonneville Project Act and the Bonneville Power

Administration (BPA) was formed to market and transmit power from federal dams in the Pacific

Northwest.108 Because private utility companies that had previously provided power to the region were in opposition to public power projects, the BPA hired American folk singer and songwriter,

Woody Guthrie, to write songs promoting hydroelectric dams on the Columbia River to the public. In May 1941, an employee of the BPA drove Guthrie up and down the banks of the

Columbia and Guthrie wrote twenty-six songs about the river and the newly constructed dams.109

106 "Text of the President's Addresses: At Bonneville Dam Hits Liberty of "Depredation" Stresses Regional Planning At Timberline Lodge Urges Wide Distribution Promises Balanced Budget Forests to Sustain Industries," New York Times (1923-Current file) (New York, N.Y.), 09/29/1937 Sep 29 1937. 107 White, The Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River, 65-66. 108 "Bonneville Power Administration: History." 109 Jeff Brady, "Woody Guthrie’s Fertile Month on the Columbia River," in All Things Considered (United States: NPR, July 13 2007), Radio. https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11918998.

52 The songs extolled the transportation, manufacturing, and electric benefits of dams. In “Talking

Columbia,” Guthrie sang an upbeat tune about how the dams allowed for the transportation of goods up and down the river and how they also provided power for people and factories. The song also quelled the opposition to dams when Guthrie sang, “You just watch this river, though, pretty soon, everybody's gonna be changin’ their tune; the big Grand Coulee and the Bonneville dams, run a thousand factories for Uncle Sam.”110 These lyrics stated the necessity of dams in order to build a strong and prosperous nation and how the benefits would change the minds of anyone who did not support public power projects. Another song in the collection, “Roll On

Columbia,” lauded the transformative potential of dams. “Roll on, Columbia, roll on. Your power is turning our darkness to dawn, so roll on, Columbia, roll on.”111 The bouncy melody glamorized the BPA’s dams and worked to propagandize public hydroelectric projects as representing a new era of rural electrification and increased manufacturing. Guthrie’s optimism about the success of dams was well founded. Unlike the Dalles-Celilo Canal, which saw virtually no river traffic upon its completion, Bonneville Dam’s navigation lock increased river traffic exponentially, transporting an average of 750,000 tons of cargo annually in the first five years and providing electricity to 40,000 customers in rural communities in the first three years.112 The success of Bonneville Dam would provide momentum for future river development projects along the Columbia River.

Despite the $83.2 million price tag of the Bonneville Project and the considerable returns, not a penny was spent to compensate Native fishers for the flooding of their traditional fishing sites. In 1940, an agreement was reached for the USACE to purchase and develop in-lieu fishing

110 Woody Guthrie, "Talking Columbia," in Columbia River Collection (Rounder Records, 1941). 111 Woody Guthrie, "Roll On Columbia," in Columbia River Collection (Rounder Records, 1941). 112 Willingham, Army Engineers, 104.

53 sites for Native fishers, but with the onset of World War II, Roosevelt vetoed all new construction projects unless they pertained to defense work.113 Finally, in 1945, Roosevelt signed a $382 million bill, which allocated $50,000 for the Corps to build in-lieu fishing sites to replace the ones flooded by the Bonneville Dam.114 The paltry and belated compensation to replace the fishing sites only took into account the financial loss of the fishery, without considering the cultural loss of traditional fishing sites. The inaction of the USACE to build the in-lieu sites and the compensation that only considered the monetary loss of the fishery would be mirrored in the settlement reached between the U.S. government and treaty tribes during the construction of The

Dalles Dam.

After WWII, the USACE, following the “308 Report,” began construction on more multi- purpose projects along the Columbia River. The 1945 River Harbor Act authorized funding for the construction of McNary Dam, nearly 300 miles upriver from the mouth of the Columbia, and four smaller dams on the lower .115 A year into construction of the McNary Dam, the

USACE recommended building a dam at The Dalles, which received immediate pushback from

Native people, who knew the dam would extinguish Celilo Falls.116 Over the following decade, a struggle ensued between the Indigenous people who wanted to save the falls and American residents of The Dalles who saw construction of a new dam as a path to a more progressive

America. With the success of the Bonneville Dam and other Corps projects in the Columbia

River basin, momentum to approve the construction of The Dalles Dam would be difficult to stop.

113 Ulrich, Empty Nets: Indians, Dams, and the Columbia River, 44-45. 114 Ibid, 53. 115 Willingham, Army Engineers, 151. 116 Ulrich, Empty Nets: Indians, Dams, and the Columbia River, 56.

54 Celilo Village

As dam construction began on the Columbia River, Indigenous people continued to live, fish, and meet at Celilo Falls. Celilo Village, the small community on the Oregon side of the river, housed approximately twelve year-round families, mostly Wyams, whose main subsistence came from fishing at Celilo Falls.117 Tommy Kuni Thompson (Wyam) was the chief of Celilo

Village, and as salmon chief, he was in charge of regulating the Celilo fishery and advocating for

Native people’s right to harvest salmon.118 Although the permanent community was small, thousands of other Native people came to fish at Celilo Falls from the Nez Perce, Umatilla,

Warm Springs, and Yakama tribes during the fishing season.119 George W. Aguilar Sr. (Wasco), grew up on the Warm Springs Reservation and often stayed at Celilo Village for prolonged periods of time to fish with his uncle who lived there. In his memoir, he candidly described the living conditions at Celilo Village, remembering, “The air in the area of Celilo Village was awful. In some places, rotting fish guts were strewn over the rocks, human excrement was often in a bucket, and urination was behind someone’s drying shed.”120 The 1855 treaties allowed for the “erecting of temporary buildings for curing [fish],” and as such, the houses at Celilo Village did not have running water or electricity.121 Despite a lack of hygiene in the village due to the treaty stipulations, Aguilar went on to describe how lively the village was, especially during salmon fishing season. He wrote about how the restaurant on the highway was full of old

117 Life in Celilo Village Newsreel, The Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fishing Commission (2012). 118 "Oregon Voices: Tommy Kuni Thompson: Celilo Village Chief," Oregon Historical Quarterly 108, no. 4 (2007), http://www.jstor.org/stable/20615810. 119 Willingham, Army Engineers, 160. 120 George Aguilar, “When the River Ran Wild!”: Indian Traditions on the Mid-Columbia and Warm Springs Reservation (Portland: Oregon Historical Society Press in association with University of Washington Press, 2005), 122. 121 "Yakama Indians: Treaty Between the United States and the Yakama Nation of Indians. Cession of Lands to the United State; reservations; payments by the United States; annuities; schools,&c.," in U.S. Statutes at Large 12, no. Main Section (1855), 953.

55 fishermen eating hamburgers and teenagers dancing along to the jukebox, recalling how many people would gather in the village to socialize and play Walúksha, a popular card game.122

Perhaps most prevalent in his writings about life at Celilo Village in the mid-twentieth century was the importance of fishing. Aguilar characterized fishing at Celilo and in the Narrows as an essential part of Native life. “Salmon fishing for the River People was the ultimate high. It was implanted in them to always return to the fishing sites.” He explained that fishing was regarded as a respected occupation and, for him, “it was at one time the very essence of [his] being.”123

For Allen V. Pinkham Sr. (Nez Perce), fishing at Celilo Falls was an integral part of his early life. Pinkham grew up on the Yakama Reservation, but moved to Celilo Village every summer with his family to fish for salmon. He recalled in an essay published in Oregon

Historical Quarterly his childhood memories of watching men pull giant salmon from the torrential river, underscoring the technique that was required to catch the salmon at Celilo Falls.

“We would watch salmon be caught by the dozens as men fished,” he remembered. “Good coordination and a good eye were needed to catch the swiftly moving salmon jumping in the air or rapidly moving up the swift currents.”124 Pinkham explained the technical aspect of catching salmon and wrote how the men stood on platforms twenty feet above the water. Using a long roping dipnet, they placed the ovular hoop just above the water and when a salmon jumped, they flipped the hoop and mesh over the fish so the current would not push open the net. Fishing practices used by Native people at Celilo Falls in the twentieth century closely resembled the traditional techniques that had been used in the area for thousands of years. Fishing spots were

122 Aguilar, “When the River Ran Wild!”: Indian Traditions on the Mid-Columbia and Warm Springs Reservation, 129. 123 Ibid, 130. 124 Allen V. Pinkham, Sr. . "Childhood Memories of Fishing at Celilo Falls." Oregon Historical Quarterly 108, no. 4 (2007): 588-589.

56 passed down from father to son, so many families fished at the same spot over many generations.

Pinkham explained that by getting permission from the head of a family, sites could be shared by anyone who needed to fish for salmon, which underscored the social and communal aspect of the

Celilo fishery.125

By the mid-twentieth century, aspects of the fishery at Celilo had modernized. Fishermen still used scaffolding and long dip nets to catch salmon, but incorporated the use of new materials. Scaffolds were built from lumber and were easy to dismantle at the end of the fishing season, or even move to other fishing sites. Dip nets that were traditionally made from wood were now made with steel hoops and nylon netting.126 Perhaps the most noticeable change at

Celilo Falls between the arrival of the Corps of Discovery and the twentieth century was the introduction of cable cars that linked the small fishing islands to the shore. Small hand-cranked and motorized cable cars were constructed so fishermen could easily move about the rapids and bring their catch back to shore. Most of the cable cars were built by fish buyers and canneries, which would buy surplus catch from the fishers. As such, riding the cable cars was free for any fisher at the falls and made it easier for the fishermen to bring their catch in at the end of the day.

Delbert Frank (Warm Springs) fished at Celilo and explained to journalist Roberta Ulrich that fishing was his family’s main food supply and income. He filled gunny sacks with salmon and then pulled them over to the mainland via cable car to sell to representatives from the canneries.127

One final physical change in the landscape of the falls that signaled the modernization of the fishery was the influx of tourists who travelled from around the Northwest to witness the men

125 T.R. Merrell Jr. R.W. Schoning, D.R. Johnson, The Indian Dip Net Fishery at Celilo Falls on the Columbia River, Oregon Fish Commission (Portland, Oregon, 1951), 10. 126 Barber, Death of Celilo Falls, 55. 127 Ulrich, Empty Nets: Indians, Dams, and the Columbia River, 54.

57 standing on the precarious, slippery scaffolding, pulling thrashing salmon from the river. They came from Portland, Hood River, and other towns in the region to take photos of the falls and the

Native people fishing, and bought fresh salmon to cook at home. Some even got in on the action.

“If they were brave, tourists scampered along the narrow foot-bridges between scaffolds to get a closer look of the Indians’ work. Otherwise they perched on the basalt rocks above the commotion and drank soft drinks.”128 The prevalence of tourism at Celilo Falls during the twentieth century can be seen as a continuation of the aesthetic appreciation and romanization of the Columbia, started by painters and photographers of the nineteenth century. Americans who came to the falls appreciated the experience of witnessing traditional fishing practices, but that appreciation did not extend to the cultural importance of the falls, as many of these onlookers would eventually support construction of the dam.

For Native people like Aguilar, Pinkham, and Frank, who spent years fishing on the river, the falls, the salmon, and the people are what created the meaning of Celilo Falls. Celilo was a dynamic, lively, and important place that physically changed over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Although there were physical changes in the landscape surrounding the falls, the meaning of Celilo Falls for Native people remained during the twentieth century. It was still a home, a place where people and the river met and where salmon were caught, and a place of economic wealth. Although no longer a hub of trade, Native people still travelled to the falls during fishing season to fish, gamble, and socialize. At the falls, traditional fishing practices continued, but technological changes at the fishery such as nets made of modern materials and cable cars highlighted the influence of industry and American settlement. Finally, tourists travelling to the falls underscored the continuation of the romanization of the Columbia River.

128 Barber, Death of Celilo Falls, 35-6.

58 Each of these elements signaled growing American influence at Celilo Falls, contributing to rising tensions in the area—and retrospectively, they could be understood a precursor to the coming disaster that would destroy the falls, and the way of life they had supported for millennia.

Fishery Conflict

As Native people continued to fish at Celilo Falls and the Narrows and Americans planned new dam construction, there were serious conflicts between the Native people living at Celilo and Americans in The Dalles. Disputes between Native fishers and the white owners of canneries along the shores of the Columbia River reduced the places where

Native people could fish, while conflicts between Native fishermen and white commercial fishermen vying for spaces to fish sometimes resulted in violence.

As Americans settled into the Columbia River region, natural resources such as agriculture, mining, and waterpower were seen as a means for monetary gain and the potential for future modernization. The abundant fish runs of the Columbia River, which ranged from 10 to 16 million fish annually before the arrival of settlers, were no exception.129 During the mid-

1860s, Andrew Hapgood and brothers William and George Hume opened the first salmon cannery on the Columbia River, catching, processing, and packing 272,000 pounds of salmon in their first year in operation. By the mid-1880s, there were thirty-seven canneries along the river packing approximately forty-two million pounds of salmon annually.130 Unlike Indigenous

129 Virginia L. Butler, "Where Have All the Native Fish Gone? The Fate of Fish That Lewis and Clark Encountered on the Lower Columbia River," Oregon historical quarterly 105, no. 3 (2004): 455, http://bates.summon.serialssolutions.com/2.0.0/link/0/eLvHCXMwnV3fT9swELagvPCyDQYabEOnPWxPgTShtv OEKqA_pKqVRoUEL8GObUCqEpaWVfz3u3PSiiJVQn... 130 Joseph E. Taylor, Making Salmon: An Environmental History of the Northwest Fisheries Crisis (University of Washington Press, 2009), 62-63. http://bates.summon.serialssolutions.com/2.0.0/link/0/eLvHCXMwtV07T8MwELagXUAMvN- oE0uVyo7zsAcGBKEVQqJSCxIslWOfEYUGqRT4-5yTkD4kBgYWK75IVnTf5ZzPu...

59 fishermen on the Columbia River, who caught one salmon at a time in dip nets, industrial fishing operations introduced gillnets and fishwheels to the river, which were able to catch many fish at a time. Fish wheels were especially deadly to salmon and at the height of fish migration, one averaged a harvest of 20,000 pounds daily.131 In 1884, The Seufert Brothers Company built the first fish wheel at The Dalles and opened their first cannery in 1896. Over the next decade, the Seufert Brothers acquired other canneries, becoming the largest industrial fishing operation on the river and selling their canned salmon around the world.132

Overfishing from American owned canneries led salmon populations to decline dramatically in the Columbia River by the turn of the century, which impacted the catch of

Native people fishing at Celilo Falls and in the Narrows. Native fisherman who opposed them found unlikely allies, as white sport fishermen opposed fish wheels because they reduced the salmon fishery—and as such, the amount they could catch for sport. Both groups successfully lobbied against the use of fishwheels, leading Oregon and Washington to ban their use in 1926 and 1934 respectively.133

Under these circumstances, the relationship between the Seufert family and Native people at Celilo Falls was profoundly complicated. The Seuferts directly competing for the fish caught by Native fishermen often fenced off the shore where their fish wheels were, interfering with customary spots and even challenging the fishing rights stipulated by the 1855 treaties. In 1918, the Yakama sued the Seufert Brothers Company in the U.S. Supreme Court for claiming that the

Yakama had no right to fish on the south banks of the river.134 The canneries also rarely hired

131 White, The Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River, 43. 132 J.W. Hume Co. The Dalles Canning and Packing Co., Seufert Bros., "Columbia River Salmon Canning Labels," in The Oregon History Project, Oregon Historical Society (date unknown). https://www.oregonhistoryproject.org/articles/historical-records/columbia-river-salmon-canning- labels/#.YFeUQbRKh0s. 133 Willingham, Army Engineers, 192-95. 134 Ulrich, Empty Nets: Indians, Dams, and the Columbia River, 14-15.

60 Native people to work in them, considering them unreliable and only employing them when the canneries were short staffed.135 On the other hand, the Seuferts relied on buying the catch from

Native fishermen, especially after the states banned fish wheels. As such, the Seuferts built many of the cable cars used by Native fishers, which made it easier for them to haul their gear and freshly caught salmon from the islands to the shore. Fish buyers from the cannery stood at the end of the cable cars to buy salmon from the Native fishermen at Celilo. Allen Pinkham recalled that his father was hired as a fish buyer and was paid $1,500 for one season of fishing, which was equivalent to many peoples’ annual income.136 Delbert Frank sold any of his catch that his family did not need to eat to Seufert cannery and said that he had good relationships with the fish buyers who gave Native people a fair price and even loaned fishermen money during the winter.137 In many ways, the relationship between the Seufert Brothers Company and Native people at Celilo was perplexing. The Seuferts refused to hire Indigenous employees for racist reasons and frequently tried to limit Native access to traditional fishing sites. On the other hand, the Seuferts relied on Native fishermen to buy fish from and the money they paid to fishers at

Celilo was a considerable amount of their income. Fundamentally though, the introduction of

American-owned canneries on the Columbia River was just another moment when control over the river continued to shift from Native to American hands. Ultimately, the Seuferts and the

Native people at Celilo Falls would both oppose The Dalles Dam as its construction spelled an end for the Seufert’s business and fishing at Celilo Falls.

Meanwhile, Native people at Celilo Falls faced conflict with both white fishermen and

Native fishermen who did not belong to the tribes stipulated in the 1855 treaties, who also sold

135 Barber, Death of Celilo Falls, 47. 136 Allen V. Pinkham, "Childhood Memories of Fishing at Celilo Falls," 594. 137 Ulrich, Empty Nets: Indians, Dams, and the Columbia River, 54.

61 their catch to canneries. Although both the people at Celilo and white fishers had opposed the use of fish wheels on the Columbia, white fishermen felt that they had to fight for the increasingly limited spaces to fish on the river, whereas Native people felt that white fishermen were encroaching onto Native fishing spaces. Due to the lucrative nature of fishing at the falls, during the 1930s and 1940s, more whites and Native people without traditional fishing rights began to fish commercially at Celilo Falls.138 The 1855 treaties signed by the four tribes stated that they had “the exclusive right of taking fish in all the streams.”139 As such, Native fishers of the four treaty tribes—Yakama, Umatilla, Warm Springs, and Nez Perce—argued that they held exclusive rights to fish at their usual and accustomed places, which excluded white fishermen and non-treaty Native peoples.140

In 1935, the Umatilla, Yakama, and Warm Springs tribes partnered with the Wasco and

Wishram and started the Celilo Fish Commission (CFC), whose purpose was to administrate and protect Native fisheries and fishing rights along the Columbia River.141 One of the main concerns of the CFC was limiting fishing access in the Dalles-Celilo Reach to only members of the signatory tribes. The conflict between Native fishers and white commercial fishers came to a head in 1938, when the CFC voted to deny the Cramer brothers—two white men who began fishing at Celilo in the early 1930s—access to fishing at Celilo.142 A representative from the BIA found that the Cramers had built a cement wall behind one of their scaffoldings to divert the current for better fishing and had even erected scaffoldings at other fishing places. Even with a

138 Barber, Death of Celilo Falls, 39. 139 "Yakama Indians: Treaty Between the United States and the Yakama Nation of Indians. Cession of Lands to the United State; reservations; payments by the United States; annuities; schools,&c.," in U.S. Statutes at Large 12, no. Main Section (1855), 953. 140 Andrew H. Fisher, "Tangled Nets: Treaty Rights and Tribal Identities at Celilo Falls," Oregon Historical Quarterly 105, no. 2 (2004): 196, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20615419. 141 "Celilo Fish Committee (1935-1957)," The Oregon Encyclopedia, updated February 9, 2021, 2021, https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/celilo_fish_committee_1935_1957_/#.YFfHN7RKg6h. 142 Barber, Death of Celilo Falls, 56.

62 threat from the BIA to cease fishing, the Cramers feigned ignorance and continued to fish at

Celilo.143 In 1946, a group of Yakama fishermen chased the Cramers off their scaffolding and then destroyed it. described the incident as “mauling,” when in reality, the

Yakama fishermen were protecting their traditional fishing rights from ever increasing white encroachment. The ultimate conflict came at the end of the year when the CFC sued the Cramers.

A Washington State judge ruled in favor of Native fishers against the Cramers, deciding that

Native people had more of a right to fish at the usual and accustomed places stipulated by the treaties.144 In the end, the Cramers were forced to remove any remaining scaffolds, but the decision did not legally keep other white fishermen from fishing at Celilo Falls. Although the court case against the Cramers was a small victory, the CFC still struggled to enforce its resolutions and mediate conflict at the fishery. As more canneries came to the river, salmon dwindled, more non-treaty Native people and white people fished at the river, and plans for The

Dalles Dam began moving forward, the conceptualization of Celilo Falls as a Native space began to disappear. Furthermore, the racialized stereotypes against Indigenous people that surfaced within these conflicts would be further enacted against Native people in The Dalles.

Racism in The Dalles

The Seuferts’ refusal to hire Native people to work in their canneries for racist reasons mirrored the sentiments that many Americans in The Dalles held towards the Native people who fished and lived at Celilo. Racism against the Native people at Celilo Falls dated back to the writings of the Corps of Discovery. The expedition members characterized the Wasco and

143 Fisher, "Tangled Nets: Treaty Rights and Tribal Identities at Celilo Falls," 198-99. 144 Barber, Death of Celilo Falls, 59.

63 Wishram as more unfriendly than other Native people they encountered and their journal entries described them as villains who often stole items from their camps.145 Later publications of

American explorers and settlers, like Washington Irving, portrayed the Wishrams as “rascals,” more likely to prey upon and steal from weak people.146 Prejudiced descriptions such as these persisted through the twentieth century, and narratives of the people living at Celilo Village resulted in overt racism, heightened discrimination, stereotyping, and violence against Native people in The Dalles. Ed Edmo (Shoshone , Nez Perce, Yakama, and ) lived at

Celilo Village when he was a child and wrote about the racism that he and his family experienced in The Dalles. “There was a vicious prejudice against Indians in [The Dalles],” he remembered. “The stores in The Dalles, Oregon had signs displayed in the windows stating ‘NO

DOGS OR INDIANS ALLOWED.’ These signs were in most of the store windows, not just a few stores.”147 The prejudiced picture that Edmo painted of The Dalles showed how the constant disparagement of Native people in early descriptions informed the American societies that eventually grew in the region, fundamentally structuring social relations in the generations that followed.

The hygiene conditions of Celilo Village that George Aguilar described, which were entirely caused by stipulations of the 1855 treaties, became part of the racist rhetoric used to discriminate against Native people. Edmo recalled a horrifying moment from his childhood, when him and his brother went with the Boys and Girls Club in The Dalles to swim. Normally, the pool did not allow Native children to swim in the big pool with the diving boards and deep

145 Lewis, "Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition: April 21, 1806," 1806. 146 Irving, Washington. Astoria. Project Gutenberg, 1836. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1371/1371-h/1371-h.htm. 147 Lani Roberts and Ed Edmo, "Celilo Falls: Parallel Lives Along N’Che Wana," in Seeing Color: Indigenous Peoples and Racialized Ethnic Minorities in Oregon, ed. Jun Xing et al. (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2007), 182-83.

64 end—they were only allowed in the toddler wading area. When they went with the Boys and

Girls Club, the white teenager working at the desk would not let him and his brother in until the leader of their club asked to speak with the manager of the pool. Edmo and his brother were eventually allowed to swim, but only after being asked by the pool employees if they had bathed.

As they were walking to the dressing room, Edmo remembered hearing one of the people behind the desk calling them “dirty Indians.” Another time at the same pool, Edmo was attacked by a group of white boys who hit him while calling him “dirty,” “savage,” and telling him to “stay in

[his] village.”148 It is apparent by Edmo’s descriptions that Native people from Celilo were seen as outsiders in The Dalles, and the stereotypes placed upon them resulted in both discrimination and violence.

Although racism against Native people and Native communities was widespread, George

Aguilar wrote about how the racism he experienced in The Dalles was greater than anywhere else he had lived. Aguilar joined the Army in 1949 and did not return to The Dalles until three years later, when he got word that four of his relatives had drowned while fishing on the river and he received a leave of absence to attend their funerals. He remembered the racism he experienced as a kid from the times he would spend at Celilo, but he was shocked after having spent three years away. Aguilar recalled walking into a barber shop and waiting for an hour-and- a-half while white men got their hair cut. Eventually, the barber told him to leave and go to the place on the other side of town for Indians. Aguilar explained that in the Army, none of the whites cared that he was Native and that the years spent in the Army made him forget that “The

Dalles was a place for a Native American to always be aware of where to tread.” He continued and wrote, “This incident quickly brought me back to the recollection of who I was. The loathing

148 Roberts and Edmo, "Celilo Falls: Parallel Lives Along N’Che Wana," 178-79.

65 and animosity of the Native American by some Whites were still alive in The Dalles even in the early 1950s.”149

One final, and perhaps more complicated example of the deeply ingrained racism against

Native people in The Dalles, was the appropriation of Native culture and imagery. At the same time that people from Celilo Village risked experiencing violence and prejudice every time they ventured into the city, The Dalles was rife with the use of Native imagery. Residents of The

Dalles used Native imagery and language to advertise in stores and white women dressed in

Native attire at some social gatherings.150 Most overtly, The Dalles High School mascot was

“Chief Wahoo,” a grinning Native caricature with a large feathered headdress.151 Edmo remembered being the mascot for the school’s basketball team. “What I did was to wear my war bonnet and lead the team out onto the court, dribble the basketball and shoot a shot at the basket, with the belief that if I made the basket, the team would win the game that night.” Edmo explained that his parents arranged for him to do this with the hope of gaining more acceptance from the people in The Dalles. He also was chosen to go to the American Legion Boys’ State model government program, but again was relegated to being a mascot and was told to “sit like an indian” on the side of the stage while the white boys learned about Washington’s government.152 The appropriation of Native culture in The Dalles was a substantive example of

Americans enacting ownership over a historically Native space. Just as Americans hoped to tame the river for their benefit, people in The Dalles only accepted and implemented Native culture when it was to their own benefit.

149 Aguilar, “When the River Ran Wild!”: Indian Traditions on the Mid-Columbia and Warm Springs Reservation, 126-8. 150 Barber, Death of Celilo Falls, 119-20. 151 Roberts and Edmo, "Celilo Falls: Parallel Lives Along N’Che Wana," 180. 152 Roberts and Edmo, "Celilo Falls: Parallel Lives Along N’Che Wana," 181-82.

66 The examples of racism, stereotype, prejudice illustrated by Edmo and Aguilar were just a few of the countless racist incidents that occurred in The Dalles against Native people during the twentieth century. Beginning with the descriptions of nineteenth century Americans, the narrative of the people at Celilo as a hindrance to American ownership over the river and as an obstacle to progress manifested in deep resentment and racism against Indigenous people.

Additionally, white residents of The Dalles characterized the people of Celilo Village as dirty because of the lack of resources in the village. Finally, people in The Dalles continued to romanticize Native culture, which resulted in the appropriation of Native imagery by businesses and schools. The combination of racism against Native people in The Dalles coupled with the competition from canneries and other fishers was making The Dalles-Celilo Reach a more hostile place for Native peoples.

During the last half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century, the narratives surrounding Celilo Falls changed. The work of artists like Bierstadt and Watkins created an aesthetic appreciation and romanization of the Columbia River that drew tourists to

Celilo Falls. Then, recommendations by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began shifting away from the goal of improving navigation on the Columbia River to aspirations of larger multiuse projects that would bring both enhanced navigation to the Columbia and hydroelectricity. These ideas were further bolstered during Roosevelt’s presidency and put into action with the construction of Bonneville Dam. To Americans of this era, the eradication of Celilo would be for the sake of progress, for the sake of a better future. At the same time, the Indigenous experience of Celilo was involuntarily changing. Celilo Falls was still a Native space, a home, and place of cultural importance, but the encroachment of American settlers, competition for limited resources, and racism in The Dalles increasingly limited the access that Native people had to

67 Celilo Falls. Over the course of the following decade, residents of The Dalles, the BPA, and the

USACE would begin construction of The Dalles Dam, bringing tensions and narratives that were generations in the making to a climactic stage.

68 Chapter 3: The Inundation of Celilo Falls

Approving The Dalles Dam

On an inky night in June of 1942, a Japanese submarine emerged from the Pacific Ocean and fired seventeen shells at , the military barracks that guarded the mouth of the

Columbia River. The submarine was out of range, so no damage was done. Later that year, a small Japanese plane launched from another submarine and flew over the Siskiyou National

Forest, dropping incendiary bombs with the hopes of igniting large forest fires, but to no avail.153

In 1945, one of these balloon-like incendiary bombs drifted over the state and exploded at a church picnic in southern Oregon, killing the wife and five children of the congregation's pastor.154 Following the attack on Pearl Harbor in December of 1941, Oregon was immediately drawn into the national war effort. Thousands of young men were drafted to fight overseas, while on the home front, civilians collected scrap metal and patrolled the beaches, scanning the skies for enemy aircrafts. Despite the sparse attacks by foreign armies, Oregon and the broader Pacific

Northwest region was prosperous during the war.155

As wartime demand mobilized Oregon’s industrial economy, the productive boom seemed to underscore the benefits of hydroelectric power in the region. During the war, dams along the Columbia provided power to the shipyards of Portland and Seattle, to aluminum mills, to factories that used the aluminum to build airplanes, and to the , where plutonium

153 "Oregon History: World War II," Oregon Blue Book, Oregon Secretary of State, 2019, https://sos.oregon.gov/blue-book/Pages/facts/history/state-ww2.aspx. 154 "Death Stalks Six On Outing," Oregonian (Portland, Oregon), 1945/05/06 1945, NewsBank. 155 It is important to note that on February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which allowed for the government to displace American citizens of Japanese descent from their homes and send them to internment camps. In total, 120,000 people on the west coast were sent to internment camps where they remained for the duration of the war and when they were released, many of their homes and belongings had been sold.

69 was produced for the atomic bombs.156 The benefits for national defense made a good case for the importance of hydroelectric dams along America’s waterways, but with the end of the war, aluminum fabrication alone did not justify the cost of further developments. The boom of new industries in the Pacific Northwest during the war, particularly aluminum fabrication and ship building, had brought high employment, population growth, and increased wealth to the region.157 Subsequently, people began building all-electric homes and buying new appliances, while cities and towns began investing in electric infrastructure such as streetlights and trains.

Between 1938 and 1952, residential energy use quadrupled and pricing for electricity diminished significantly.158 This era of population growth and cheap electricity for individual consumers was yet another reason that many Americans supported construction of public power projects like dams. For residents of The Dalles, farmers along the upper Columbia, and business leaders, construction of the proposed Dalles Dam would be beneficial for future industry, river commerce, agriculture, and individual electric use. However, their vested interest in the project was in direct conflict with the desires of Native people who fished and lived at Celilo.

In September 1945, the USACE held a public hearing in The Dalles, where representatives from the fishing industry, agriculture industry, barging industry, and other business leaders discussed and debated construction of a dam at The Dalles. The Portland

District chief engineer, Colonel Ralph Tudor, described the dam as “the gateway of the Empire,” one that would connect The Dalles to the entirety of the Columbia River.159 The Oregonian newspaper reported on the meeting and gauged dissent for the proposed dam. Unsurprisingly, they found that only members of the fishing industry, both Native and non-Native, opposed the

156 White, The Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River, 72. 157 Barber, Death of Celilo Falls, 33. 158 White, The Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River, 74. 159 Barber, Death of Celilo Falls, 65.

70 plan: “Proposed construction of a dam across the Columbia river at The Dalles, for the purpose of navigation improvement and power development, was opposed only by fishing industry representatives.” The article explained that representatives of Native tribes objected to the plan because the dam would destroy their treaty reserved fishing grounds and that no financial payment could justify the loss of the falls. A non-Native representative from the Columbia Basin

Fisheries Development Association was more concerned with the financial loss from declining salmon runs and highlighted data that showed a $4 million loss in fishing revenue after the construction of Bonneville Dam. The rest of the meeting’s members supported construction of the dam because “it would provide for manufactured and agricultural products of the upper

Columbia…[and improve] navigation for water commerce up the river...and possibilities of development from an enhanced power supply.” The Oregonian expressed that those backing the dam, such as members of local government in towns upriver, were the “most forceful witnesses” who saw the dam as a solution for high freight rates and economic development.160 Although the article showcased the arguments both for and against the dam, and even provided a glimpse into the perspective of Native people, the editorial skewed in favor of construction by providing more statements that supported the dam and lauded its power capacity. This first meeting reflected the rest of the struggle against construction of The Dalles Dam and designated the parties who favored and opposed the plan. The narratives of progress, eased navigation, and potential hydroelectric power were formidable arguments under the circumstances. Native people and non-Native fishermen who were anti-dam would have a difficult time overcoming the interests of the BPA, the USACE, American business leaders, and individuals in The Dalles.

160 "Fish Industry Against Dam," Oregonian (Portland, Oregon), 1945/09/24 1945.

71 Despite the points provided by supporters of the dam, funding was still difficult to come by after the war and the abstract plan for future industries in the upper Columbia was not enough to sway conservative lawmakers already wary of public power projects. Those hesitancies were alleviated in June 1948 with the uncharacteristic and historical flood of the Columbia River. The

Columbia River naturally rose in the spring and summer due to snowmelt, but there had not been a significant flood since the great flood of 1894.161 In May 1948, temperatures were well above normal, causing increased snowmelt from the Cascades and Rockies. This, combined with heavy precipitation, caused the Columbia River to swell over thirty-six feet.162 To contextualize the extent of this flooding, the average annual peak discharge of the Columbia River is 583,000 cubic feet per second (cfs); in the three weeks of late May and early June in 1948, the

Columbia’s flow never dipped below 900,000 cfs. During the flood, the Dalles-Celilo Canal and the McNary Dam overflowed, and the waters threatened the homes of 180,000 people living below Bonneville Dam. By the end of May, water had flooded much of Portland’s downtown, people were forced to evacuate from their homes, and dikes and levees along the river were on the verge of collapse.163 Disaster struck on Memorial Day, when the dikes surrounding Oregon’s second largest city, Vanport, gave way.

Vanport was initially built as a temporary housing project for ship builders and port workers during WWII. Henry Kaiser, an American industrialist, opened the Oregon Shipbuilding

Corporation in 1941 under contract to build ships for the British Navy. With many white male workers being drafted to go overseas, thousands of Black people began arriving in Oregon to seek employment opportunities. At the time, Portland was one of the whitest cities in America,

161 White, The Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River, 74. 162 "The Vanport Flood," Our Local Flood History, Levee Ready Columbia, 2019, 2021, https://www.leveereadycolumbia.org/timeline/vanport-flood/. 163 Willingham, Army Engineers, 151-53.

72 with less than 1 percent of the population being Black. The city was also deeply segregated and most Black residents lived in outlying neighborhoods near the railroads. The war changed this, and with the boom of employment opportunities, Portland’s Black population increased from just under 2,000 in 1940 to 22,000 in 1944.164 In order to house workers for his shipyard, Henry

Kaiser built the town of Vanport on marshland between the banks of the Columbia River and the

Columbia River Slough, which was several feet below the level of the river and completely surrounded by a system of dikes. At its peak, Vanport housed 40,000 people, 6,000 of whom were Black.165 Its postwar population dwindled as shipbuilding and port jobs dissipated; by

1948, approximately 18,500 residents still lived in Vanport, one-third of them Black. White residents of Portland wrongly conceptualized Vanport as a dilapidated city where only poor

Black people lived.

As floodwaters rose during the late spring of 1948, on Memorial Day, the Housing

Authority of Portland plastered posters around Vanport stating that the dikes were safe and that residents would be warned if necessary. That afternoon, one of the railroad dikes holding back the river breached, creating a 600-foot gap for water to flood into the town. Within hours,

Vanport was completely deluged by the flood waters, fifteen people had died, and all residents of the city were displaced.166 Before the flood waters subsided, thirty-two people were dead, seven were missing, tens of thousands of people were displaced from their homes, and over 100,000 acres of developed agricultural land was destroyed. In total, the USACE estimated that the damage from the flood exceeded $100 million.167 The violence and destruction of the flood

164 "Blacks in Oregon," The Oregon Encyclopedia, updated January 20, 2021, 2021, https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/blacks_in_oregon/#.YG4KLBNKj_Q. 165 Natasha Geiling, "How Oregon’s Second Largest City Vanished in a Day," Smithsonian Magazine, February 18, 2015,https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/vanport-oregon-how-countrys-largest-housing-project-vanished- day-180954040/. 166 Ibid. 167 Willingham, Army Engineers, 158.

73 served as a reminder of the power and unpredictability of the river and added fervor to those in support of dam construction. Not only would dams provide power for industry, irrigation for agriculture, and eased navigation: they would also help with flood control to protect factories and homes along the river.

In response to the flood, President Harry Truman ordered the USACE engineers who were currently reviewing and updating the “308 Report” to include flood management plans for the Columbia River Basin. In March 1950, the USACE sent the updated “531 Report” to

Congress, which primarily contained plans for flood control, but also included elements pertaining to “electric power generation, navigation, irrigation, and fish and wildlife conservation.”168 Congress put the report to use later that year when they authorized The Rivers and Harbors and Flood Control Acts of 1950, which authorized and appropriated initial funding for many of the projects proposed in the “531 Report.” In total, $75 million was appropriated to fund existing projects in the Columbia River Basin and for the partial accomplishment of future projects. Nestled on page nineteen of the document, in between the approval for the John Day

Dam and flood protection plans in Pendleton, Oregon, was the approval for The Dalles Dam and the destruction of Celilo Falls.169

Pushback, Negotiation, Compensation, and Construction

The original 1945 meeting in The Dalles had clearly delineated those in favor and those in opposition to the dam. By 1950, when the dam was approved, those camps had not changed.

For the BPA, the USACE, and business leaders in sectors such as agriculture and river

168 Willingham, Army Engineers, 158. 169 H.R. 5472 The Rivers and Harbors and Flood Control Acts, (1950).

74 transportation, the benefits of cheap hydroelectric power, eased navigation, irrigation, and flood control all justified the cost of construction and the loss of Celilo Falls. When testifying in front of congressional appropriations committees in 1950 and 1951, the USACE and other proponents of the dam used these arguments to extol regional benefits of the project. They also contended that regional hydroelectric projects would have national benefits, contributing to American victory in the Cold War and bolstering national defense. Beyond progress, dams and other large- scale technological projects symbolized engineering prowess, control over nature, and elimination of waste. As such, the construction of large dams that created jobs, produced power, and tamed rivers was a way for the United States to assert their ideological, technological, scientific, and economic supremacy over the Soviet Union.170 For many Americans in the Pacific

Northwest, any water that was not used for electric generation was considered a waste of the region’s resources that undersold its potential. Furthermore, the inception of the Korean War allowed the USACE to assert the dam's importance to national defense. They argued that The

Dalles Dam would provide cheap additional power to meet the “increasing requirements of defense industries.”171 With the addition of the arguments that the dam would provide dominance in the Cold War and bolster national defense, the only thing standing in the way of funding the dam was pushback from Native people and white fishing interests.

As politicians neared a decision to fund The Dalles Dam, Native people, white fishing interests, and white Native allies resisted the plan by testifying in front of Congress and at local meetings held by the USACE. Native people’s main arguments in opposition to the dam was that

170 Paul R. Josephson, Industrialized nature: brute force technology and the transformation of the natural world (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2002), 64. http://bates.summon.serialssolutions.com/2.0.0/link/0/eLvHCXMwdV3LCsIwEFxEL3ryUfGNP1BpkyZpzz4PHkX Qi9hkC178AL_e3WhVRI_JYQkhZGcGZgdAilkUfv0JBBoyXfBsLSNTJFZksTifY425Mtb6qMDjXi_... 171 Barber, Death of Celilo Falls, 78-79.

75 it would violate fishing rights stipulated in the treaties and that Celilo was a place of cultural importance. Councils of the four treaty tribes and the Celilo Fish Committee passed resolutions that opposed construction of the dam and written statements submitted to Congress asserted that the loss of Celilo Falls would be in direct violation of the 1855 treaties.172 In May 1951, representatives from the four tribes flew to Washington D.C. to testify in front of the House

Appropriations Committee. Thomas Yallup, a representative from the Yakama delegation, highlighted the cultural and religious importance of Celilo Falls, explaining, “Fishing at the falls water is held sacred to the Indians.”173 Another member from the Yakama delegation, Watson

Totus, made clear that no amount of compensation could justify inundation, concluding, “No compensation could be made which would benefit my future generations, the people still to come.”174 William Minthorne, from the Umatilla delegation, cited his own and other native peoples’ service during WWII and argued directly against the USACE claim that a dam was necessary for national defense. The next year, the Yakama delegation returned to D.C. in a final effort to oppose construction of the dam. They testified that many of the existing dams in the

Pacific Northwest were not in use and therefore The Dalles Dam was not needed for additional power generation, and that funds appropriated for the dam would be better spent supporting the war effort in Korea.175 This argument was a creative strategy that subverted the imperial logic that new dams were a necessary tool for national defense.

White fishing interests such as the Seuferts and commercial fishermen also opposed the dam, but for different reasons than Native people. Although often in conflict with Native

172 Barber, Death of Celilo Falls, 82-83. 173 Paul Stanton Kibel, "A Human Face to Instream Flow: Indigenous Rights to Water for Salmon and Fisheries," Emory International Law Review 35, no. 3 (2021): 382. 174 Michelle M. Jacob, Yakama Rising: Indigenous Cultural Revitalization, Activism, and Healing (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2013), 9. 175 Barber, Death of Celilo Falls, 84-87.

76 fishermen, white fishermen worried that the dam would lead to a drastic decline in salmon populations in the Columbia River. However, their apprehensions were not due to the negative environmental impact; rather, they were concerned with the economic impact the dam would have on their industry. The Seuferts, in particular, knew that The Dalles Dam would mean the end of their cannery, as much of their product relied on the catch of Native fishermen at Celilo

Falls. In a petition to “save the salmon industry,” William Seufert warned that the economic justifications for the dam did not take into account the public value of the river.176 Although they aligned with Native people in their opposition to the dam, their reasonings were for self-serving, economic purposes.

In response to the arguments made by fishing interests that the dam would be detrimental to salmon populations, the USACE suggested that on the contrary, the dam would in fact be beneficial to salmon migration. State and federal fishery programs, such as the U.S. Fish and

Wildlife Service and Bureau of Commercial Fisheries, claimed that the Native fishing at Celilo

Falls posed more of a threat to salmon runs than dams. They asserted that by inundating the falls and dispersing the Native people who fished the river, more salmon would make it to the upper

Columbia to spawn. Despite the fact that only 10 percent of the salmon caught on the Columbia

River were caught by Native fishermen, Colonel T.H. Lipscomb, the Portland District Engineer from 1951 to 1954, told the Columbia River Inter-Agency Committee that the inundation of the

Native fishery at Celilo would be “an important boon to conservation.”177 Perhaps the most baseless claim came from Assistant Secretary of the Interior William Warne, who misinformed

Congressional leaders that the lake created by the Dalles Dam might actually be more beneficial

176 Barber, Death of Celilo Falls, 71. 177 Ulrich, Empty Nets: Indians, Dams, and the Columbia River, 80-81.

77 for Native people because it would make fishing easier.178 Analyzing these arguments made by supporters of the dam, it is clear that their claims were often contradictory and made with either skewed or incomplete evidence. Depending on the questions raised by Congressional leaders about salmon conservation, the USACE and other representatives would respond with whatever evidence bolstered their plan. In one meeting they might assert that Native people were the greatest threat to salmon migration, while saying in another meeting that building the dam would help Native people fish more efficiently. Furthermore, the evidence provided that dams did not pose a threat to salmon was misrepresented as conclusive. Studies had not yet shown the long- term effects of dams on salmon migration or what a series of dams along the Columbia River might do. The Corps later admitted that the Bonneville Dam alone injured at least 15 percent of migrating fish and that a series of dams “could all but destroy the fishery resource.”179 Upon hearing the arguments for and against The Dalles Dam, Congress felt satisfied with the justifications for construction and authorized funding, but were sympathetic to Native people only in regards to the economic loss of the fishery. The committee ordered the Corps to write a report that contained the views of both pro-dam and anti-dam parties, compared differing viewpoints, and updated the committee on settlement negotiations.

Construction of The Dalles Dam began in February 1952, before settlements had been negotiated with the tribal members affected by the dam construction. The Oregon Fish

Commission published a study in late 1951 for the main purpose of recording Native customs surrounding the falls and Native commercial fishing catch. The Indian Dip Net Fishery at Celilo

Falls on the Columbia River provided brief historical information about the Native fishery, but focused primarily on assessing the monetary value of the fishery by analyzing data of the amount

178 Ulrich, Empty Nets: Indians, Dams, and the Columbia River, 81. 179 Willingham, Army Engineers, 197.

78 of fish caught between 1947 and 1950. The report estimated that the average annual value of fish caught by Native fishermen was $700,000 and concluded that $23 million would be sufficient reparations for the loss of the fishery.180 One potential issue with this report is that the commercial catch data used for the assessment was provided by the Seufert Cannery, so the findings of the data could have been biased to better represent their interests.

In March 1952, the USACE released its Special Report on Indian Fishing Problem, The

Dalles Dam, Columbia River, Washington and Oregon in response to Congress’ request that the

Corps submit a report which reviewed the arguments made for and against the dam and provided an update on settlement negotiations. The report was comprehensive and beyond the original scope, also providing historical background of the Celilo fishery, Native and American sentiment toward dam construction, the claims and desires of each of the treaty tribes, and even conflicts between some of the tribes. The report recognized that each of the four tribes had varying claims and desires for compensation, but summarized these desires more generally at the beginning of the report. The main points were that all of the tribes opposed construction of The Dalles Dam, that they desired full compensation for losses, that they wanted alternate fishing sites, and that they were not inclined to accept compensation for giving up treaty guaranteed fishery rights.181

The report also summarized the discussions that had occurred at the Congressional and local hearings in recent years. Although the USACE included arguments in opposition to the dam, in following paragraphs they dispelled concerns with their own counterclaims. For example, in the section titled, “Depletion of Columbia River Fishery and Pending Indian claims,” the Corps admitted that salmon populations had declined since the arrival of white settlers and

180 T.R. Merrell Jr. R.W. Schoning, D.R. Johnson, The Indian Dip Net Fishery at Celilo Falls on the Columbia River, Oregon Fish Commission (Portland, Oregon, 1951), 33-34. 181 Special Report on Indian Fishery Problem The Dalles Dam Columbia River. Washington-Oregon, Portland U.S. Army Engineer District, Portland District, Corps of Engineers (March 10 1952), 19.

79 presented the Native claim that dams were the main reason for this decline. However, they only partially admitted to this, responding that other factors from modernization had led to diminished fish runs, such as logging, overfishing, pollution, and irrigation practices. They claimed that declining populations were due only “to some extent the construction of dams.” Furthermore, the

Corps asserted that Native people chose to ignore these other environmental factors and solely focus on the issue of large federal dams.182 The tone of the document glaringly demonstrated the views of the USACE towards Native people in the region and further perpetuated the narrative that the people at Celilo were considered a hindrance to progress. As the title suggests, the treaty tribes were viewed as a problem that needed to be resolved in order to construct the dam, not as equal partners in a bilateral conversation. Additionally, as the section above showed, the language the Corps used in the report attempted to minimize Native claims by making it seem that they were either uncooperative or ignorant to other environmental factors impacting salmon.

Elsewhere in the document, the Corps reported on public opinions regarding the flooding of the Celilo fishery. The section indicated that some members of the public were sympathetic to the Native peoples’ cause, but that the group was mostly made up of “Indians and their white friends, especially, including those interested in helping under-privileged and minority groups.”183 The Corps ceded that a larger portion of the general public opposed the project because of the sentimental loss of a scenic tourist destination, but concluded, “Large numbers of businessmen and others interested in full development of the Northwest water resources feel that normal progress and industrial development warrants the dam construction even though it will adversely effect [sic] the Indians.”184 This statement made even clearer the priorities of the

182 Special Report on Indian Fishery Problem The Dalles Dam Columbia River. Washington-Oregon, 21-22. 183 Ibid, 23. 184 Ibid, 24.

80 USACE—the desires of Native people and their allies were trivial compared to the interests of

Americans who would benefit economically from The Dalles Dam.

The final portion of the document detailed the Corps plan for relocating Native people living either within the construction zone of the dam or in the flood zone of the completed project. It also discussed the ongoing settlement negotiations with the various tribes and estimated the annual catch amounts by Native fishermen at Celilo and the Narrows. The report found that twenty-one parcels of land would need to be purchased in order to complete dam construction. Most of the parcels were owned by individuals that the Corps planned on buying out through involuntary direct purchases. They also noted that any temporary buildings, such as drying sheds on public lands, would be condemned. Finally, they stated that any burial grounds within the flood zone would only be moved per the request of relatives.185

Because none of the treaty tribes’ reservations were anywhere near the flood zone of the dam, the Corps stipulated that settlement to the tribes only needed to account for the loss of the fishery rather than the property value surrounding the river. Individual sections of the document addressed each of the four tribes' claims and explained the ongoing proceedings for reaching settlement. At the time of publication, the Yakama had requested over $19 million in damages from existing hydropower projects on the river, destroyed fish runs, and lost income from present river development projects. The Corps also added that the 1855 treaties without question determined the legal rights for the Yakama to fish at Celilo.186 The Confederated Tribes of the

Warm Springs and Umatilla had also made claims against the government for $300,000 and

$600,000 respectively. However, the Corps research claimed that both of the tribes’ rights to fish at Celilo specifically were initially under question. The 1855 treaties allowed for fishing at usual

185 Special Report on Indian Fishery Problem The Dalles Dam Columbia River. Washington-Oregon, 65-70. 186 Ibid, 29-31.

81 and accustomed places, but a treaty signed in 1865 by representatives of the Warm Springs relinquished these rights, although the tribe argued that the 1865 treaty “was secured by fraud and misrepresentation.”187 The USACE eventually agreed that the 1865 treaty was null and also recognized the rights of the Umatilla to make claims for settlement, who were initially accused of not having historically fished at Celilo Falls.188 The case for the Nez Perce was more contentious. At the time, the Nez Perce had not been able to make claims for damages for loss of the falls because their historical participation in fishing at Celilo was called into question both by the other signatory tribes and the USACE. The Corps report stated that, “present information indicates that these Indians fished extensively in the upper Columbia, and the Celilo area may not have been one of their usual and accustomed fishing places.” The Corps concluded that they would look into the matter further and request evidence from the Nez Perce to determine whether the Nez Perce could receive settlement from the construction of The Dalles Dam.189

One final group was under consideration for both settlements and relocation: the Native people who lived at Celilo Village. The 141 residents of Celilo Village posed “special problems with respect to the construction of The Dalles Dam.”190 Many of the residents of the village were direct descendants of the Wyam who never left Celilo after the treaties of 1855. Although some of the residents of the village were enrolled members of treaty tribes, at least forty were either unenrolled or enrolled in tribes that had not signed the treaties, which meant that they might not qualify for compensation. Furthermore, the Native people at Celilo Village had no legal counsel, which was the primary way the Corps gathered much of their data for the report. As such, the document stated that the Corps could not record group desires for compensation. In the end, the

187 Special Report on Indian Fishery Problem The Dalles Dam Columbia River. Washington-Oregon, 39. 188 Ibid, 45-46. 189 Ibid, 54-55. 190 Ibid, 55.

82 Corps determined that the families at Celilo might qualify for special compensation because they were entirely dependent on the fishery for their livelihood and that public sentiment was most sympathetic to this group.191 The report concluded by citing the figure deduced by the Oregon

Fish Commission, that $23 million would be needed to compensate for the loss of the Celilo

Falls fishery and that progress was being made to negotiate settlements with each of the tribes.192

Although the USACE report and the Oregon Fish Commission Report included the arguments made by opponents of the dam and focused particularly on Native claims in the discussion, their findings all but negated these arguments by providing reasonings for dam construction to go ahead and by assigning a monetary value to the fishery. Despite an extensive section in the Oregon Fish Commission report analyzing cultural meaning of the falls, their monetary estimate only included the value of salmon caught. The USACE report included the history of the falls, but invalidated the cultural importance of the fishery by writing, “the Celilo fishery has some religious importance to the Indian.”193 The report demonstrated both that the

USACE considered Native pushback against the dam to be inferior to the justifications presented by supporters of the dam and that the Native people surrounding Celilo were still characterized as an obstacle to progress. With funding appropriated and construction having begun, the dam would be completed and Celilo Falls inundated—all that was left to determine was the final compensation for Native people.

In The Dalles, the jobs created by dam construction contributed to a population boom, and between 1950 and 1960, the population increased from 7,645 to 11,699 people.194 Growth

191 Special Report on Indian Fishery Problem The Dalles Dam Columbia River. Washington-Oregon, 56-58 192 Ibid, 85-89. 193 Ibid, 11. 194 "Population Estimates of Counties and Incorporated Cities of Oregon," (Portland State University Population Research Center, July 1 1963).

83 was both an expected result of The Dalles Dam and one of the project’s indirect goals.

Population growth signaled that the progress, modernization, and economic growth that was promised by supporters of the dam was happening in the region. However, the results of the accelerated population expansion had adverse effects that had either not been discussed in the planning process or was overlooked. There was not enough housing in The Dalles prior to construction, so many construction workers and their families resided in trailer parks that popped up around the city. The children of dam workers pushed classroom capacities to their limits, and traffic jams caused delays on the small town’s roads.195 The Dalles Chamber of Commerce and

The Dalles Chronicle, both supporters of the dam, did their best to frame the impacts of population growth as a necessary and temporary inconvenience for progress.196 Within The

Dalles, community members in the following years would have to fight for funding to build new schools, pay teachers, and build more houses.

Construction of the dam continued while Native people negotiated with the USACE over settlements for the soon to be inundated falls. The tribes went to these negotiations out of necessity to have their interests represented with the impending and now unstoppable destruction of the Celilo fishery. Although the main struggle was between Native tribes and the U.S. government, the situation led to conflict between the tribes who claimed that the other tribes were not within their rights to claim Celilo as a usual and accustomed fishing place. The Yakama tribal council went so far as passing a resolution that they alone held treaty rights to fishing at

Celilo Falls. They alleged that Celilo was not a usual and accustomed fishing place for the

Umatilla and further asserted that Umatilla fishermen were merely guests allowed to fish there.

They also claimed that although the Warm Springs tribes had once fished at Celilo, they had

195 Barber, Death of Celilo Falls, 99. 196 Ibid.

84 relinquished those rights when signing the treaty in 1865. Finally, leaders from the Yakama,

Umatilla, and Warm Springs tribes all agreed that the Nez Perce did not have substantial claims that Celilo Falls was one of their usual and accustomed fishing places and thought that they should not be included in the settlement fund.197 Ultimately, the Corps would decide to negotiate with each of the tribes individually to avoid intertribal conflicts.

As stated in the 1952 report on the Indian Fishery Problem, the Corps recognized the rights to fish at Celilo for all the treaty tribes, except for the Nez Perce. In order to negotiate settlements for each of the tribes, the USACE needed to estimate the worth of the fishery and understand how the fishery was divided between the different tribes. To do this, the Corps contracted the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to conduct a census of the falls that would determine the amount of fish caught, which tribes caught the fish, and how much the fish were sold for in order to estimate the annual value of the fishery. The census gathered data from 1951 to 1954, but by the time the census was completed, the Umatilla and Warm Springs tribes had already settled with the USACE. The final estimate for the value of the average annual catch was in agreement with the Oregon Fish Commission’s estimate of $700,000, and they estimated the total worth of the fishery to be $23 million.198

The Umatillas and Warm Springs were the first tribes to accept settlement in December

1952. The tribes likely signed earlier because they were worried that the allegations made by the

Yakama would lead the USACE to rescind their qualification for compensation.199 The report by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimated that Umatillas caught roughly 11.5 percent of the

197 "Yakama Nation & Corps Discuss Celilo Settlement," The Oregon History Project, The Oregon Historical Society, 2004, https://www.oregonhistoryproject.org/articles/historical-records/yakama-nation-corps-discuss-celilo- settlement 198 Barber, Death of Celilo Falls, 158-160. 199 Ibid, 161-62.

85 fish at Celilo Falls annually, while the Warm Springs only caught 7.3 percent of the fish.200 As such, their compensation would be significantly lower than the compensation for the .

The Umatillas received approximately $4.6 million and the Warm Springs $4.4 million, around

$3,400 for each enrolled tribal member.201 The Yakamas became the third tribe to settle with the

Corps in 1954. The Yakamas had asserted that they were the most numerous of those who fished at Celilo Falls and proclaimed that they made up 66 percent of the people who fished at Celilo and caught 78 percent of salmon sold commercially.202 The numbers from the U.S. Fish and

Wildlife Service supported their claim that they were the most numerous of fishermen at the falls, but presented a lower annual catch estimate for the Yakama of 62 percent.203 The figures of the report that demonstrated the greater number of Yakama fishermen was only one reason that they received greater compensation than the other tribes. The Yakamas had a robust legal counsel and in the settlement meetings, their delegation outnumbered representatives from the

USACE. In the meetings, the Yakama skillfully argued that The Dalles Dam was one of many examples of dispossession incurred by the United States and that as such, they deserved a fair deal. In the end, the Yakama settled and received a little over $15 million in compensation, 59 percent of the total sum paid out by the federal government to compensate Native losses.204

Initially not included in the negotiations for compensation, the Nez Perce were required to provide evidence that Celilo Falls was one of their usual and accustomed fishing places. After gathering testimony from tribal members, historical documents, and BIA records, the USACE still did not recognize their rights to compensation because they had not yet proved their

200 Summary report on Indian fishery census: Celilo Falls and vicinity, 21 (U.S. Department of the Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service, 1952). 201 Binus, "Yakama Nation & Corps Discuss Celilo Settlement." 202 Barber, Death of Celilo Falls, 164. 203 Summary report on Indian fishery census: Celilo Falls and vicinity, Short, 21. 204 Barber, Death of Celilo Falls, 166-67.

86 legitimacy to fish at Celilo.205 Additionally, data showed that Nez Perce fishermen only caught

3.9 percent of the fish annually at Celilo Falls.206 Between 1954 and 1956, the Nez Perce negotiated the validity of their claim for compensation and finally, in late 1955, the USACE agreed to pay them settlement. The total payment to the Nez Perce for the loss of the Celilo

Fishery was $2.8 million.207

The final group to negotiate and receive compensation were the unenrolled Native people living at Celilo Village, who posed difficulties to the USACE because they did not have legal representation to negotiate compensation. Initially, the Corps encouraged the unenrolled people of Celilo Village to enroll in one of the federally recognized treaty tribes to receive compensation through their settlements. Those that did not enroll were approached by employees of the Corps individually to negotiate settlements. The unenrolled Native people at Celilo Village were each compensated $3,400.208 Additionally, the people at Celilo Village were forced to relocate. In 1949, the BIA completed construction of New Celilo Village, higher on the banks of the Columbia River and outside of the dam’s flood zone. The Celilo Relocation Project dispersed the thirty-six families living at Celilo Village. Some moved onto reservations while others moved into the newly constructed homes of the new village.209 However, not all Native people accepted compensation or agreed to relocate. Celilo Village Chief, Tommy Thompson refused to cooperate or negotiate with the Corps. He refused compensation and resettlement and only left

Celilo Village when his old age and poor health forced him to move into a nursing home.210 The removal of Native people from their ancestral homes can be understood as the final resolution of

205 Barber, Death of Celilo Falls, 168. 206 Summary report on Indian fishery census: Celilo Falls and vicinity, Short, 21. 207 Binus, "Yakama Nation & Corps Discuss Celilo Settlement." 208 Barber, Death of Celilo Falls, 170-72. 209 Ibid, 146-48. 210 "Oregon Voices: Tommy Kuni Thompson: Celilo Village Chief," 679.

87 the narrative that the people living at Celilo Village were a hindrance to progress. By paying off and relocating the people at Celilo, the USACE was literally able to remove the Native people that were perceived as an obstacle to American settlement and river development. Ultimately,

$26.8 million was paid to settle with the Native people who had fished at Celilo Falls for millennia. With settlements paid and the residents of Celilo Village relocated, nobody remained to prevent The Dalles Dam from being completed.

“The Darkest Day”

In the afternoon of March 10, 1957, a group of Wasco fishermen were catching and preparing fish at their accustomed fishing sites in the Long Narrows when the water unexpectedly began to rise. The men were perplexed. Normally when the river rose, it did so swiftly, but this day, the water was both rising and slowing down at the same time. The fishermen abandoned their scaffoldings and nets and found safety higher on the banks of the river only later realizing that this uncharacteristic rise was from the closing of The Dalles

Dam.211 That morning, thousands of spectators lined up along the banks of the Columbia River to witness the completion of The Dalles Dam. At 10 a.m., the Corps gave the signal for “down gates” and twenty-two employees pushed twenty-two buttons to close the floodgates of the dam.212 Native people wept on the banks by Celilo and watched as the rapids, islands, falls, and fishing platforms were slowly drowned by the rising waters.213 In a matter of hours, the falls that had been fished for millennia were rendered silent, subsumed under the backwaters of The

Dalles Dam.

211 Aguilar Sr, "Celilo Lives on Paper," 613. 212 "Closing the Gates on the Dalles Dam," Oregon Historical Quarterly 108, no. 4 (2007). 213 Aguilar Sr, "Celilo Lives on Paper," 613.

88 The day Celilo was inundated was considered “the darkest day” in the recent history of the tribes.214 The language Native people used to describe Celilo’s destruction was laden with grief, trauma, and loss. Chief Tommy Thompson was 102 years old and living in a nursing home at the time of inundation. Upon hearing the news, he said, “There goes my life. My people will never be the same again.”215

When Allen Pinkham saw the flat waters of the Columbia, he said that his heart sank and described feeling a sense of directionlessness. “What is to happen now, I thought, now that there are no fish to be caught.”216 George Aguilar described the moment as the “death of the river” and wrote that the new silence that fell over the river was devastating.217

In contrast to the grief felt by Native people, local newspapers reporting on the events of the day overshadowed the loss felt by Indigenous people by celebrating the progress it represented. The Dalles Chronicle described the completion of the dam as “one of man’s greatest river development structures.”218 The paper also claimed that “The Dalles Dam was certain to become a prime tourist attraction” and that the glittering lights of the dam reflecting on the still waters were “an occasion for pride and a reminder of progress in northwest development.”219

The Oregonian wrote on the day of inundation that the eased access for river navigation was a moment of “community celebration” and that the day’s operation was “completely successful.”220 The following day, the paper described the excitement of the thousands of people

214 Ulrich, Empty Nets: Indians, Dams, and the Columbia River, 80. 215 "Oregon Voices: Tommy Kuni Thompson: Celilo Village Chief." 216 Allen V. Pinkham, "Childhood Memories of Fishing at Celilo Falls," 594. 217 Aguilar Sr, "Celilo Lives on Paper.," 613. 218 "Closing the Gates on the Dalles Dam.” 219 Jon S. Arakaki, "From abstract to concrete: Press promotion, progress, and the dams of the mid -Columbia (1928–1958)" (Ph.D., , 2006), 188-89, https://search.proquest.com/dissertations- theses/abstract-concrete-press-promotion-progress-dams/docview/305252003/se-2?accountid=8505... 220 "Closed Gates to Raise Pool Behind New Dam at The Dalles," Oregonian (Portland, Oregon), 1957/03/10 1957, NewsBank.

89 who came to witness the closing of The Dalles Dam and the “end of an era in the Columbia

River history.” Celilo Falls was only mentioned in two sentences when the paper wrote, “Islands disappeared, and then The Dalles-Celilo canal slipped under the surface, and the famed Celilo

Falls Indian fishing rocks were buried. By nightfall, only a minor ripple remained where the cataracts had roared for thousands of years.”221 With that brief epitaph, the dominant narrative of

American progress was cemented. Reporters said nothing about the meaning of the loss of the falls to Native people, or the grief that was felt that day.

Six months after the USACE drowned Celilo Falls behind The Dalles Dam, the fourteen turbines that generated electricity were put online, fulfilling the aspirations of the Corps, the

BPA, and many Americans to use the current of the river to produce power for the region. The

American narrative of progress that surrounded the dam and Celilo had been realized. Large barges carrying agricultural products could now easily navigate hundreds of miles upriver by utilizing the massive navigation lock that lifted boats over eighty feet, and by the 1970s, the twenty-two total turbines were producing 9.2 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually.222

To promote tourism, the Corps built parks on both the Oregon and Washington sides of the river during the 1970s. Today, Celilo Park and Recreation Area remains owned and operated by the USACE and acts as a rest stop, RV park, and recreational area for people driving along I-

84. The patch of green in between the flat waters of and the busy highway stands out in contrast to the windswept and yellow brush covered hills of the Columbia River Plateau. After pulling off of the highway, driving under the interstate, and crossing the train tracks, one finds oneself in a large parking lot looking out over the grassy park. Scattered coniferous and

221 Lawrence Barber, "Water Impounded Behind Dalles Dam," Oregonian (Portland, Oregon), 1957/03/11 1957, NewsBank. 222 Willingham, Army Engineers, 161.

90 deciduous trees shade the picnic tables that provide a place for families and boaters to rest and eat. Around the park, in the parking lot, by the river, and on the grass, informational signs educate visitors about the history of Celilo Falls, including the expedition of the Corps of

Discovery and the traditional fishing practices of Native people. The placards explain that the falls were inundated by The Dalles Dam, but conveniently omit that it was the USACE who built the massive concrete structure. Sitting on the banks of the river, one can witness both Native and non-Native people fishing from the shore and windsurfers tearing across the expansive lake.223 In an absurd sense, the creation of Celilo Park and Recreation Area can be perceived as a continuation of the nineteenth-century narrative of the Columbia River as a place of aesthetic appeal. By providing a place to look out over the river, the Corps promoted their vision of the potential beauty present in the permanently altered landscape.

To contend with imminent fish loss in the aftermath of dam construction, the Corps constructed fish passage facilities, similar to the ones at Bonneville Dam, to enable salmon to pass the dam on their migration upriver. The Corps spent $27 million on the two fish ladders with the hopes of maintaining the fish populations that had previously swam along the Columbia, but their effectiveness was negligible.224 In the decades since the construction of The Dalles Dam and other mainstem dams along the Columbia River, fish populations have declined dramatically. It is estimated that before American settlement, 10 to 16 million fish migrated up the Columbia annually; now that number is closer to 2.5 million.225 Although multiple factors

223 I was unable to travel to Celilo Park due to the COVID-19 pandemic, so I have taken creative license when describing the park. I utilized Google Maps and Google Images to see what the park looked like. 224 "U.S. Army Corps of Engineers " The Oregon Encyclopedia, 2021, accessed March 8, 2021, https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/u_s__army_corps_of_engineers/#.YE4_95NKhp8. 225 Butler, "Where Have All the Native Fish Gone? The Fate of Fish That Lewis and Clark Encountered on the Lower Columbia River," 455.

91 contributed to this decline, including pesticide runoff from agriculture and overfishing, dams have caused the most serious habitat and passage loss for migrating fish.

Although the USACE steadily denied that fish populations would decline as they constructed dams along the Columbia River, they simultaneously took steps to offset the inevitable losses even before the inundation of Celilo Falls. In 1946, the Corps, under the direction of the Columbia River Fisheries Development Program (CRFDP), began remodeling and building hatcheries along the river. Between 1946 and 1980, the CRFDP funded the construction and expansion of twenty-six hatcheries in Oregon and Washington.226 Although introducing hatchery-raised salmon to the river might have seemed a viable option, the reality was that artificially reared salmon faced all of the same challenges as wild salmon and did not have the evolutionary adaptations to thrive in a river environment. Hatchery fish released into the

Columbia River still had to contend with the challenges of water pollution, degraded stream habitat, and the dams that barricaded many fish from reaching spawning grounds. Additionally, hatchery fish were not adapted to survive in wild environments. In hatcheries, salmon were raised in large pools with no threat of predation and fed food pellets on a regular basis. Once released into the Columbia River, these fish did not have a fear of predators and struggled to find food. Moreover, these fish competed with the wild spawning salmon for limited resources and essentially out-competed wild fish based on sheer numbers.227

By the 1970s, the USACE explicitly admitted that dams and other environmental factors were resulting in a large mortality rate of migrating salmon. Turbine strikes, warm water temperatures in the backwaters of dams, and increased nitrogen levels were particularly

226 Cain Allen, "Replacing Salmon: Columbia River Indian Fishing Rights and the Geography of Fisheries Mitigation," Article, Oregon Historical Quarterly 104, no. 2 (2003): 200-01. 227 "Hatcheries," Northwest Power and Conservation Council 2021, 2021, https://www.nwcouncil.org/reports/columbia-river-history/hatcheries.

92 devastating for juvenile salmon traveling downriver. A 1973 study estimated that 95 percent of all Snake River juvenile salmon were killed before reaching the lower Columbia River.228 Over the ensuing decades, the Corps has spent millions of dollars trying to mitigate fish loss along the

Columbia River by constructing more fish ladders, sending more water off dam spillways, and even transporting juvenile salmon by truck and barge past the dams. The pattern of the Corps trying to solve issues by spending more money and constructing more projects along the river has thus far produced disappointing results, suggesting that the money might be better spent trying to improve habitat and fish migration conditions in the Columbia River, or studying the feasibility of dam removal.

Beyond the environmental impact of the dam that adversely affected salmon and the river, the inundation of Celilo has continued to have an immeasurable impact on Native people.

The ways Native people and Americans reacted to inundation aligned with the historical narratives and conceptualizations of Celilo Falls. American reactions to that day demonstrated how steeped they were in the narratives created since the arrival of settlers in the nineteenth century. The falls and the people who resided there for thousands of years were viewed as a hindrance to both navigation and progress, and the flooding of Celilo Falls symbolized that they had overcome that obstacle. Furthermore, the flooding of the falls in the backwaters of the dam represented strength of American engineering, modernization, control over nature, and overall progress. For Native people, the loss of the fishery signaled more than the “end of an era.” For them, it was the death of the river, a loss of home, a loss of economic independence, and an erasure of their culture—one which they continue to resist as they memorialize Celilo Falls in the

228 Willingham, Army Engineers, 199-200.

93 present day and mobilize to deconstruct The Dalles Dam as part of a broader national conversation that promises a more hopeful narrative for the future.

94 Conclusion: Post-Inundation

Memorializing Celilo Falls

In the sixty-four years since the flooding of Celilo Falls, Native people have written poems, published essays, recorded stories, and founded organizations that work to memorialize the falls and reclaim agency over the rivers. Many of the works convey the sadness and loss felt by Native people, but many of them also underscore the resilience and continued survival of the people. Combined, these elements create new narratives that challenge the dominant American narratives that led to the construction of The Dalles Dam. In 2007, the Oregon Historical

Quarterly published a special edition for the fiftieth anniversary of Celilo’s inundation titled,

“Remembering Celilo Falls.” The collection of personal essays, articles, and poems were written by both Native and non-Native people and demonstrated the existing memory of the falls and the ways in which people continue to conceptualize the narrative of the place. Ed Edmo, who wrote about the racism he experienced growing up in Celilo Village, is a poet, storyteller, and lecturer on Northwest tribal culture. In the edition on Celilo Falls, Edmo contributed his poem, “Celilo

Blues,” which explored his feelings toward the government officials who advocated for construction of the dam without meaningfully considering the voices of Indigenous people: “he came automaton-atomic-government-man...his whining voice came out in a never ending drone promising promises again & again deafened ears which are paid not to hear.”

Edmo’s poem demonstrated the power that the U.S. government had in the decision to build the dam. By characterizing the government representatives as “automatons,” Edmo conveyed the sentiment that the United States’ stance towards inundation was an unstoppable mechanized force. The poem also embodied the USACE and BPA as the “deafened ears which

95 are paid not to hear,” signifying that although those who advocated for the dam recognized that the fishery at Celilo would be lost, the potential for profit and progress silenced any opposition to the plan. In the final line of his poem, Edmo wrote, “again we drowned.”229 This closing expressed that the dam did more than just destroy the physical falls, but also erased a place of

Native meaning and connection to history and culture. Furthermore, this line showed that this was not a singular event—that other forms of dispossession had occurred prior to the inundation of the falls and that dispossession continues today.

Other Indigenous creators have also used writing as a form of memorializing the falls.

Elizabeth Woody (Warm Springs, Dine) was the Oregon Poet Laureate from 2016 to 2018 and has written poems about her family, her Native identity, and the natural world. In the special edition of Oregon Historical Quarterly, Woody contributed an essay that distilled her experience of attending the First Salmon ceremony that was hosted in Celilo Village in 2005. The essay conveyed the “pervasive sadness” felt by people because of the loss of Celilo, but also highlighted the persistence of Native people and their culture. “Courage, wisdom, strength and belief bring us together each season to speak to all directions the ancient words. There is no physical Celilo, but we have our mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, and our children bound together for all possible life in the future.”230 Although the physical falls were gone, Woody expressed that through family and community, people could support one another and move forward from loss. In a separate essay, Woody delved into her personal connection to Celilo

Falls, where she described Celilo as “a place revered as one’s own mother.” She was born two years after the fall’s inundation, but grew up hearing stories from her grandparents, aunts, and

229 Ed Edmo, "Celilo Blues," Oregon Historical Quarterly 108, no. 4 (2007). 230 , "Oregon Voices: Celilo (Wyam) Root Feast and Salmon 2005," Oregon Historical Quarterly 108, no. 4 (2007): 655, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20615805.

96 uncles about their experiences catching and preparing fish at Celilo. From these stories, Woody derived her own relationship to a waterfall that she never witnessed firsthand. “The story of

Wyam’s life is the story of the salmon, and of my own ancestry. I live with the absence and silence of Celilo Falls, much as an orphan lives hearing of the kindness and greatness of his or her mother.” The conceptualization of Celilo Falls as a lost parent illustrated that the pain of losing the falls reverberated into the lives of the younger generations. Moreover, Woody went on to explain that the existence of the falls correlated with the wealth and health of Native people:

“When the fish ran, people were wealthy...No one would starve if they could work. Even those incapable of physical work could share other talents. It was a dignified existence.” Even the sound of the echoing water created a sense of well-being for those who fished and lived at the falls.231 The narrative of Celilo as a place of culture, community, and abundance became an atavism created through stories and remembrance, now coupled with the grief of its loss.

Non-Native writers have also used their medium to portray Celilo Falls. Some of these writers have chosen to focus more on the grief felt by Native people in the aftermath of inundation, while others include the history of the falls and their meaning for Native people.

Perhaps the most well-known mention of Celilo Falls in American literature was in ’s

1962 , One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. In the novel, the protagonist and narrator is Chief

Bromden, a Native man who suffers from schizophrenia and lives in an Oregon psychiatric hospital. Bromden’s decline into madness in the story directly correlates with the inundation of

Celilo Falls and the trauma caused by the cultural and environmental loss.232 By today’s

231 Elizabeth Woody, "Recalling Celilo: An Essay by Elizabeth Woody," Gathering the Stories, 2014, http://www.gatheringthestories.org/2014/01/05/recalling-celilo-an-essay-by-elizabeth-woody/. 232 Ashley E. Reis, "The wounds of dispossession: displacement and environmentally induced mental illness in Ken Kesey's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest," Interdisciplinary studies in literature and environment 23, no. 4 (2016): 712, http://bates.summon.serialssolutions.com/2.0.0/link/0/eLvHC...

97 standards, Kesey’s novel might risk tokenizing Native trauma, but it seems that his intention was to portray the extent of loss felt by Native people in the aftermath of Celilo’s inundation by depicting Bromden’s madness as a direct result of his immense grief.

Another author, Craig Lesley incorporated Celilo Falls into his 1984 novel, Winterkill, but unlike Kesey, Lesley went even further by highlighting what the falls meant to Native people and wrote a more realistic portrayal of Native loss. In a scene between the novel’s protagonist

Danny and his son, Jack, the two sit around a campfire while Danny tells the story of Celilo Falls and the people who fished there. The moment is powerful as Danny attempts to convey to Jack the meaning and importance of Celilo Falls. He explains how people would gather from all over the region to trade and fish at Celilo and that Native people could make a living from fishing and were able to feed their families, but Jack has difficulty understanding why people were not happy when they got paid the settlement by the government. “‘So they had the money,’ Jack said. ‘And if it was a fair price, they should have been okay.’” Danny responds to his son that the money was only good while people still had it and once it was gone, the people could no longer fish to support themselves. At the end of the conversation, Danny recalls watching Celilo disappear under the backwaters of The Dalles Dam and the sadness felt by all the Native people present.

The grief felt by Danny is eventually understood by Jack when he goes silent.233 Both of these novels by non-Native authors portray the grief caused by Celilo’s inundation, but to varying degrees. Kesey’s novel uses the depth of Bromden’s sadness after the loss of the falls to explain his mental illness, but does not take space in the novel to explicitly explain the cultural significance of the falls. Lesley also portrays the grief felt by Native people after Celilo’s inundation, but directly explores the cultural significance of the falls and how it was understood

233 Craig Lesley, Winterkill (New York: Picador, 1984), 177-81.

98 as a communal meeting place and place of wealth. Both stories stray from the major American narratives surrounding the falls and highlight the wrongdoing by the government, but choose to focus more on the sadness of Native people, rather than exploring Indigenous resilience and existence after inundation.

Another way that the narratives of Celilo have persisted beyond inundation is through

Native storytelling. Lillian Pitt (Warm Springs) is an Indigenous artist who has had exhibitions in museums around the country. She explained on her website that Native storytelling is not only meant to entertain, but also has the purpose of “handing down cultural meaning and understanding.”234 In the mid-1980s, Larry George, a Yakama storyteller and artist, recorded

“Celilo” in Sahaptin and sent it to Virginia Hymes, an anthropologist and professor of linguistics, who translated the story into English. George’s “Celilo” told the history of the falls from their creation to the arrival of white people to the years after inundation. The beginning of the story focused on the times before the arrival of American settlers. The stanzas in this first part were more joyous and emphasized the connection that the people had with the salmon, which was a gift from their creator. “For hundreds of thousands of years the Indian has fished these very same, pure waters. Every year, year after year the people have waited for the first salmon to appear.”235 This stanza emphasized the longevity of those who fished and lived at Celilo. For the people, the river and the salmon were bestowed upon them and were their source of life and survival for thousands of years. The following passages explained the fishing traditions at Celilo including the First Salmon ceremony, where people gathered together to thank the “Almighty” for providing fish: “They came from near and far. They came from both sides of the river. They

234 Lillian Pitt, "Native American Story Telling," 2018, http://lillianpitt.com/native-american-story-telling/. 235 Virginia Hymes, "Sahaptin: Celilo told by Larry George," in Voices from Four Directions: Contemporary Translations from Native Literatures of North America, ed. Brian Swann (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004), 201.

99 came to this place called Celilo, a place of great water, a place of the great falls.”236 These sentences conveyed the narrative of Celilo as a meeting place that drew people in from all around the region to fish, socialize, and trade.

In the second half, the overall tone of the story shifted and became more negative to symbolize the arrival of Americans and the introduction of industry: “Then, then they came, the other men, men of different ways. These men, they built things. Bridges, towns, factories...and dams. Dams that slow the mighty waters.”237 In this section, the stanzas ping ponged back and forth to highlighted the impact that white people had on the environment and then contrasted with how Native people adapted to continue their traditional fishing practices and ways of life.

“Still every spring the núsux, which the young salmon were called by the people, the núsux came,” George narrated. “The Indian came just as he had for generations. Generation after generation, father to son, father to son. Now he built scaffolds of lumber.”238 This section showed how Native people were resilient and continued practicing their traditions, albeit in adapted ways, while Americans laid claim over the land and the river. The ending of the story explored George’s feelings after Celilo Falls disappeared. “Time moves too fast for men...and things and places soon have no meaning. Words become words blowing in the wind lost.”239 The ways that falls were understood by Native people were ignored and lost upon the Americans who advocated for construction of the dam. George felt that the inundation of Celilo had not only destroyed the physical falls, but also stolen the meanings synonymous with the falls. “They have taken with them their laughter. They have taken their singing. They have taken their prayers to

236 Hymes, "Sahaptin: Celilo told by Larry George," 202. 237 Ibid, 204. 238 Ibid, 205. 239 Ibid, 206.

100 another place.”240 To George, the flooding of the falls and Celilo Village not only displaced the people living there, but also was a form of erasure that eradicated much of the traditions and meanings of Celilo Falls held by Native people. The final stanza of the story was told from the perspective of Celilo Falls and was laden with the grief of its inundation. “So when you pass this way don’t look for me. I am gone. I live only in the memory of a few. To you...I am dead and gone.”241 George’s ending used language that conveyed the permanence of death, but also how memory could keep Celilo alive in the minds of those who were able to witness the falls.

Today, Native people keep Celilo alive in the minds of many through organizations founded to provide education to the public on Native history, while also providing support to

Native communities. The Confluence Project was founded by a group of Native and non-Native leaders in commemoration of the Lewis and Clark bicentennial, with the mission of presenting the history of contact without perpetuating the myth that Americans discovered the Columbia

River. The non-profit also has built numerous public art installations along the Columbia River designed by acclaimed memorial designer, , which have the purpose of reconnecting people with the river and educating the public about Indigenous history.242 In recent years, the organization has launched an online library that gives a platform to Native voices and Indigenous knowledge. A video recorded in 2019 collected the stories of six Native people and their relationships to the Columbia River and Celilo Falls. Beyond talking about what Celilo had meant to Native people when it still was fished, some of them spoke about how they dealt with the loss of the falls. Wilbur Slockish (Yakama, Klickitat) explained that he and other Native people sometimes found places to remember Celilo. Slockish went to another waterfall after

240 Hymes, "Sahaptin: Celilo told by Larry George," 207. 241 Ibid. 242 "About Confluence," Confluence Project, 2019, 2021, https://www.confluenceproject.org/about-confluence/.

101 inundation and just listened to the sound of the falling water. “I just laid there listening...we find places like that to remember the sounds. That’s a sound I’ll never forget.” Virginia Beavert

(Yakama) recalled the grief she felt looking at the still waters where Celilo Falls had been and expressed that the compensation provided by the government was turned down by many people because it “did not make up for what [they were] losing.” Many of the poems, essays, and stories that memorialized Celilo highlighted the sadness and loss felt by Native people, but others chose to focus on the resilience of Native people moving forward from Celilo’s destruction. Aurelia

Stacona (Warm Springs) stated that although Celilo was “taken away...we don’t stop there...we continue on to allow that water to be a part of us.”243

Other Native-led organizations demonstrate resilience by supporting Native individuals and communities in practical ways. In response to declining salmon runs, the four treaty tribes created the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fishing Commission (CRITFC) in 1977, an organization that continues to pursue its four primary goals to this day. First, the commission works with fishery managers, community members, and biologists with the goal of restoring fish habitats in the entire Columbia River Basin, seeking to restore river populations and protect watersheds where fish live. Second, CRITFC works to protect tribal treaty fishing rights by employing lawyers, policy advisors, and fishery enforcement officers to ensure fair harvest in both tribal and non-tribal fisheries. Third, the organization promotes and shares salmon culture by educating the general public about their restoration initiatives, fishing rights, and tribal culture. Finally, the commission provides a variety of services to Native fishers, including the maintenance of fishing sites along the river and a program which helps fishers from the four tribes to sell and market

243 Woodrow Hunt, Celilo, Stories from the River (Confluence, Tule Films, NW Documentary, 2019).

102 their catch.244 CRITFC is just one of many Indigenous-led organizations in the Pacific Northwest that continues to advocate for Native rights while also educating the public on tribes’ histories and cultures. In the 150 years between the arrival of the Corps of Discovery and the inundation of Celilo Falls, white Americans had laid claim to the Columbia River and decisively shifted the control over the river away from native people. The founding of an organization like CRITFC was a way for Native people to regain agency over a river that was still under the majority influence of Americans.

Another way that Native organizations have memorialized Celilo is through education.

Both the Confluence Project and CRITFC have resources that can be used by educators, such as the Confluence Digital Library or CRITFC’s Wy-Kan-Ush-Pum Salmon Activity Book, which is a coloring book that teaches elementary-aged children about tribal culture, salmon migration, and the importance of healthy watersheds.245 Other institutions such as the Smithsonian’s National

Museum of the American Indian have created national initiatives, such as Native Knowledge

360°, which aims to provide educators with resources to teach students new perspectives on

Native history and culture. One of their lesson plans focuses on Native culture and history in the

Pacific Northwest and the connection between Native people, salmon, and water. The curriculum seeks to teach students not only about Native history, but also to help them understand the impacts that dams have on the environment and the lives of Native people. One of the resources provided is a case study specifically about Celilo Falls, which contains videos of tribal members explaining the importance of Celilo Falls as a place of fishing and a place where people gathered.

The learning outcome for this curriculum is nuanced and states that although dams do provide

244 "CRITFC Mission and Vision," Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fishing Commission, 2020, 2020, https://www.critfc.org/about-us/mission-vision/. 245 "Wy-Kan-Ush-Pum Salmon Activity Book," Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fishing Commission, 2020, 2020, https://www.critfc.org/for-kids-home/for-kids/.

103 power to the region, they have lasting negative effects on salmon populations and on Native communities. The lesson recognizes the grief felt by Native people after the falls were flooded, but chooses to focus more on the continued existence of Native fishing rights along the

Columbia River.246 Curricula like this are important because they dispel the myth that after

Celilo was inundated, Native people ceased to fish along the Columbia River. Furthermore, this curriculum highlights Native knowledge and culture rather than focusing on grief and trauma, unlike many traditional curriculums about Indigenous histories.

Individuals, too, have created resources that can be utilized by teachers to educate students about Celilo Falls. Shana Brown is a Yakama teacher who is an advocate for more robust education about Native history in public schools. In 2017, she wrote a curriculum for fourth graders in the state of Washington that teaches the entire history of Celilo Falls. Her lesson plan was created as a storypath, which is a pedagogical approach to teaching primary level social studies that emphasizes creating stories and doing projects in the classroom in order to derive meanings from historical events.247 Shana Brown’s curriculum, Living in Celilo, asks students to build their own model of Celilo Village and then create their own characters and families living at Celilo. The purpose of this activity is to engage students with the course material by essentially immersing them into the story of Celilo Falls. The majority of the unit is spent learning about the history of Celilo, from pre-contact to dam construction to inundation, by reading stories by Native writers and looking at artifacts like baskets and nets used to preserve and catch salmon. The final day of the unit, the teacher, who plays the role of the U.S. government, is supposed to physically destroy the model of Celilo Village built by the students

246 "Pacific Northwest Histories and Cultures," Native Knowledge 360°, Smithsonian Institution, 2018, 2020, https://americanindian.si.edu/nk360/pnw-history-culture/index.cshtml#title. 247 Betsy Fulwiler and Margit McGuire, "Storypath: Powerful Social Studies Instruction in the Primary Grades," (1996). http://www.socialstudies.org/sites/default/files/publications/yl/0903/090301.html.

104 in order to simulate the inundation of the falls and village. Brown explains in the teacher’s guide for the unit that the goal of the curriculum is for students to focus on the concepts and emotions of Celilo’s history rather than the memorization of names and dates.248 Curricula like Brown’s are necessary and effective for elementary-aged students, allowing them to cultivate empathy while learning about historical events. Moreover, by teaching younger generations about Celilo

Falls through Indigenous narratives, the narrative of progress created by the U.S. government can be dispelled and students in the future will grow up with a better understanding of what happened to Celilo.

Through poetry, prose, storytelling, Native-led organizational databases, and educational resources, Celilo Falls has been continually memorialized by Native and non-Native individuals and communities. Many of the artifacts used to remember Celilo use language that conveys the sadness and sense of loss after Celilo was drowned. For authors like Elizabeth Woody, the absence of the falls in her life was akin to growing up without a mother and Larry George felt like the disappearance of the falls was a death. For many other creators, the meaning of Celilo now is an amalgam of grief and resilience. Celilo Falls is no longer a place for people to catch abundant salmon; the silence of the still water reminds people of the day Celilo drowned and fewer Native people come to Celilo Village as in years prior to inundation. However, Celilo is still an Indigenous space and a place where Native people can come together to celebrate the

First Salmon ceremony, share stories, and educate younger generations about tribal culture.

Native led organizations, like the Confluence Project are using their platform to showcase Native voices in public art installations and school curricula, Other organizations like CRITFC support

248 Shana Brown, Living in Celilo- A Storypath Exploring the Lasting Legacy of Celilo Falls (Washington: Office of Native Education/ Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction Washington State & Trillium Publishing, Inc., 2017), 2.

105 Native fishers so they can continue fishing along the Columbia River and do work to revitalize fish habitat in the Columbia River. Through art, writing, education, and the founding of organizations, the Indigenous narratives of Celilo persist.

Moving Forward

On Indigenous Peoples’ Day in 2019, standing on the shore of the Columbia River where

Celilo Falls used to be, members of the Yakama Nation and the Lummi Nation called for the removal of the Bonneville Dam, the , and The Dalles Dam. JoDe Goudy, the chairman of the Yakama Nation gave a speech at Celilo Park, declaring that “the Columbia River dams were built on this false legal foundation, and decimated the Yakama Nation’s fisheries, traditional foods and cultural sites.” Goudy called on the United States to “reject the doctrine of

Christian discovery” and remove the three dams.249 As of today, calls for dam removal have yet to be put into action. In February 2020, the federal government rejected the idea of removing four other dams along the Snake River, saying that removal of the dams would “destabilize the power grid, increase overall greenhouse emissions, and more than double the risk of regional power outages.”250 The refusal to remove smaller dams on tributaries of the Columbia River signals that the removal of mainstem dams along the Columbia is unlikely, but perhaps not impossible, as the Yakama Nation joins a growing nationwide movement centering on environmental justice and dam removal.

249 Courtney Flatt, Northwest Tribes Call For Removal Of Lower Columbia River Dams (Oregon Public Broadcasting, 2019). 250 Gillian Flaccus, "Feds Reject Removal of 4 US Northwest Dams in Key Report," AP News (2020). https://apnews.com/article/e1a60df0a37f29ce8a86fa18ff8513f5.

106 The call for the deconstruction of the three Columbia River dams can be better understood within the broader context of dam removal in the United States. As of February 2021, there were more than 90,000 dams in the United States that blocked rivers, but in the past thirty years, nearly 900 dams have been demolished.251 Most of these removed dams were on smaller tributary streams and rivers around the country, but there are some cases where larger mainstem dams were decommissioned. One of the first instances of a large scale dam removal project in the United States happened here in Maine twenty-two years ago. In 1999, the Edwards Dam on the Kennebec River was removed after a decade-long battle between environmental groups and the owners of the dam. The owners of the dam argued that removing the Edwards Dam would be too expensive and that it would cause more along the river. Proponents of dam removal successfully argued that deconstruction of the dam would benefit the health of the river and improve upriver access for migrating fish. They also noted that the Edwards Dam only provided about one tenth a percent of Maine’s electricity.252 In 1997, advocates of removal rejoiced when the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission denied the owners of the dam to renew their permits because of the negative impacts the dam had on the river’s health.253 Two years later, the

Edwards Dam was demolished and the changes in the river were almost immediate. Within a year, Atlantic sturgeon, shad, and alewives were consistently swimming past where the dam had been. As the fish returned, other species flourished: seals were seen forty miles upriver from the ocean and otters, bald eagles, and osprey populations increased. The removal also benefited the

251 Jessie Thomas-Blate, "69 Dams Removed in 2020," (2021). https://www.americanrivers.org/2021/02/69-dams- removed-in-2020/. 252 Tara Lohan, "How Removing One Maine Dam 20 Years Ago Changed Everything," The Revelator (2019). https://www.nrcm.org/news/how-removing-one-maine-dam-changed-everything/. 253 Brian Graber, "Edwards Dam," (2019). https://www.americanrivers.org/edwards- dam/#:~:text=Kennebec%20River%2C%20Maine,to%20restore%20significant%20river%20ecosystems.

107 people of Augusta. The waters of the river were no longer stagnant, so trails and parks were built along the banks of the river and more people began using the waters for recreational purposes.254

Since the destruction of Edwards Dam, more dams have been removed along rivers in

Maine. On the Sebasticook River, the Fort Halifax Dam was removed in 2008 and on the

Penobscot River, the Great Works Dam was removed in 2012 and Veazie Dam in 2013.255 In the past few months, more attention has been placed on a plan to remove two more dams along the

Kennebec River: the Lockwood Dam in Waterville and the Shawmut Dam in Fairfield.

According to the Natural Resources Council of Maine, the removal of these two dams is a critical first step to restoring endangered Atlantic salmon populations in the state. The main opposition came from the owners of the dam who said in a statement that the dams are “critical in helping Maine meet its carbon emissions targets,” even though the dams only generate half of one percent of the total electricity used in Maine. Opposition also came from community leaders who warned that the removal of the dams could cost the taxpayers millions of dollars. In recent months, the Maine Department of Mariner Resources was still deciding whether or not to deconstruct the dams, but a lawsuit filed by the owners of the dam, Brookfield Renewable, has essentially left the proposal dead in the water. As of three weeks ago, Maine has decided it will no longer pursue dam removal along the Kennebec River.256

Today, The Dalles Dam and other mainstem dams along the Columbia remain, continuing to produce power and block the river. Since the request to remove The Dalles Dam and other mainstem dams on the Columbia River in 2019, neither the BPA nor the USACE has

254 Lohan, "How Removing One Maine Dam 20 Years Ago Changed Everything." 255 Ibid. 256 Caitlin Andrews, "Maine drops plan targeting removal of 4 Kennebec River dams, citing mistakes," Bangor Daily News (April 8 2021). https://bangordailynews.com/2021/04/08/politics/maine-drops-plan-targeting-removal- of-4-kennebec-river-dams-citing-mistakes/.

108 responded or indicated that they plan on studying the feasibility of removal. Presently, the region relies heavily on hydroelectric power: 28 percent of power consumed in the Pacific Northwest comes from the BPA’s hydroelectric projects, posing a major challenge to large dam removal.257

The three dams that the Yakama asked to be removed provide electricity to several million homes in the Pacific Northwest and help transport $2 billion in commercial cargo along the river annually, including 53 percent of all U.S. wheat exports.258 Pragmatically, it is unlikely that serious consideration of dam removal will happen in the near future, but it is worth learning from dam removal projects in places like Maine to understand the benefits that dam deconstruction has on the environment and people. The Dalles Dam will probably remain on the Columbia River for the rest of my lifetime, but if we choose to invest in other forms of renewable energy and bolster regional power grids, it is possible that over the long arc of history, Celilo Falls could someday be restored.

If history is any indication, narratives will play a critical role in bringing about a more hopeful reality. For more than two hundred years, contested narratives surrounding Celilo Falls have been mobilized by both Native and non-Native people. Indigenous conceptualizations of

Celilo Falls as a place of wealth, sustenance, trade, cultural importance, and a home persisted despite the arrival of American settlers and the forced dispossession and displacement from land and water. For Americans, Celilo Falls was always recognized as a Native place, but also understood as a problematic space. The original narrative of Celilo Falls and the people that lived there as a hindrance to river navigation morphed over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth

257 "Hydropower in Oregon," Oregon Department of Energy, 2016, 2021, https://www.oregon.gov/energy/energy- oregon/Pages/Hydropower.aspx. 258 Lynda Mapes, "Yakama, Lummi tribal leaders call for removal of three lower Columbia River dams," The Seattle Times (2019). https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/environment/yakama-lummi-tribal-leaders-call-for- removal-of-three-lower-columbia-river-dams/.

109 centuries to characterize Celilo as an obstacle to regional and national progress, which ultimately culminated with the construction of The Dalles Dam and the destruction of Celilo Falls. But while the inundation of Celilo Falls was a profound spiritual, economic, and cultural loss for

Native people, they have continued to live and resist these forms of erasure. Today, Indigenous creators, leaders, and educators are using their platforms to both memorialize Celilo Falls and support the rights of Native people. The grief of the loss is present in their work, but many choose to focus on moving forward and celebrating Native success. Celilo is gone, but the

Indigenous narratives and meanings of the place persist and thrive. Although forcibly relocated, the new Celilo Village remains a home and a meeting place; a First Salmon ceremony takes place every year in the recently constructed longhouse, and Native people continue to exercise their right to catch salmon along the Columbia River.

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